
Glass B6 117 / 
Book . J A i_ 



THE GROWTH OF 
THE OLD TESTAMENT 



THE GROWTH 

OF THE 

OLD TESTAMENT 



y j- by 
REV. T. A. JEFFERIES F.L.S. 



SECOND EDITION REVISED 




NEW YORK 
MOFFAT YARD & COMPANY 

1921 



.3+ 



PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
! DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH 



PREFACE 

THIS book is an attempt to enable the general 
reader, and especially our young people, to 
see the Bible from the modern point of view. 
Its style and matter have been deliberately chosen 
to appeal to boys and girls at the age when they 
leave elementary schools. While it is not a history, 
either of the Jews or the Bible, it aims at dealing 
with certain important events in the life of a people, 
so that Scripture may be read in the light of history. 
The aim so defined has determined the method 
followed. Events must be made to live, and there- 
fore description must be vivid; the book must be 
short, consequently the events dwelt on must be 
few; the treatment must be proportional, a con- 
sideration which keeps out many tempting themes; 
and, lastly, the fact that the book is intended for 
boys and girls makes it advisable to emphasize the 
heroic element in which the Bible is so rich. Hence, 
as far as possible, each chapter has been made to 
hinge on some great moment in the development of 
the Hebrew people, and around this have been 

5 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

gathered the main points of the subject to which 
the chapter is devoted. The pictorial element will 
appear to some as a waste of space, but school- 
masters regard it as essential. Too many recent 
books on the Bible have been of the overcrowded 
text-book order; our endeavour has been to pro- 
duce something that the young people will read. 
At the same time a great deal has been packed both 
into the descriptions and into the more condensed 
parts of the text. 

In certain places definite statements may be 
found where a less confident tone would better suit 
the present position of Biblical inquiry. That, how- 
ever, is a weakness common to all elementary text- 
books and classrooms; qualifications and excep- 
tions come in the more advanced stages. Moreover, 
there is a great distinction between the modern 
point of view and modern views : the former is 
one, the latter are many. We are not concerned 
to teach either the most advanced or the more con- 
servative views on particular points : our desire 
is to get our young people to look at the Bible with 
an open mind, and with some sense of the way in 
which the book has come into existence : what pre- 
cise opinion they form on this story and that poem 
is a matter on which we need have little anxiety. 

The author is under great obligation to a circle of 
6 



PREFACE 

men, consisting of Mr Joshua Holden, M.A., and 
the Revs. G. G. Hornby, M.A., B.D., H. J. Watts, 
R. H. B. Shapland, and J. T. Brewis, B.A., B.D., 
each of whom has read the work, both in outline 
and MS., and made suggestions. To this extent 
the book is a corporate production. The Revs. 
R. H. B. Shapland and J. T. Brewis are especi- 
ally to be thanked : the latter because his com- 
ments have been so full and important, and the 
former because the idea of producing the book in 
this way began with him, and he has throughout 
acted as secretary to the circle, in which capacity, 
as well as in his own contributions, he has rendered 
invaluable service. 



PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 

The first edition of this book was published for the 
educational work of the United Methodist Church. 
It is now issued through the ordinary channels in 
the hope that it may assist a wider circle to deal 
with Biblical difficulties and to appreciate more the 
greatest of all books. 

I have taken the opportunity of making a few 
corrections and slight amplifications; otherwise the 
text is unchanged. A short appendix is added on 
telling Bible stories. 

7 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE BEGINNINGS 11 

The Crossing of the Red Sea 18 

God's Covenant with Israel 16 

The Remaking of Israel in the Wilderness . . 23 

Relation to the Bible 31 

II. THE TASK OF PROPHECY 34 

Elijah's Conflict with the Priests of Baal . . 34 

The National Apostasy 38 

Preservation of the National Faith ... 48 

III. WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS . 54 

Amos at Bethel 54 

The Nature of Prophecy 62 

Prophetic Writings 67 

Other Early Writings 70 

IV. THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK .... 74 

The Story of the Discovery 74 

The Book that was Discovered 81 

Chief Results of the Discovery .... 86 

V. THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW . 91 

The Exile 91 

Importance of the Exile to the Old Testament . 96 

The Return 537 b.c 101 

The Book of the Law 106 

VI. THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT . 112 

Glimpses of Jewish History from Ezra to Christ . 112 

Influences which formed the Second Canon . . 119 

9 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

VI. THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT— 
continued 

Influences which Completed the Old Testament Canon 131 
The Old Testament as a Whole .... 136 

APPENDIX : On Telling Bible Stories .... 141 

IMPORTANT DATES 146 

INDEX 147 



10 



THE GROWTH OF THE 
OLD TESTAMENT 

CHAPTER I 
THE BEGINNINGS 

1. The Crossing of the Red Sea 

Effects of the Deliverance on the Hebrews 

2. God's Covenant with Israel 

How it was Given and Received 

Its Moral Character, the Decalogue, Imperfections 

Three Important Features : (a) Based on God's Free 

Choice; (b) It Revealed God's Character; (c) More 

Revelations to Come 

3. The Remaking of Israel in the Wilderness 

Moses' Three Great Achievements 
Transformation of the People 
Earlier and Foreign Elements : the Patriarchs 
The Conquest of Canaan 

4. Relation to the Bible 

Materials in Preparation 
Israel's Distinctions 

WIDE stretches of moorland heather are 
sometimes swept by fires which leave 
the hills all bare and black, but within 
a few seasons fresh shoots have sprung from the 
charred soil, and a denser growth, more beautiful 
than ever, paints the moor with its purple glory. 
I In some such manner we may think of the Bible. 
It is a collection of books divided into two parts, 

11 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the Old and New Testaments. The former is the 
Jewish Bible, a library of books which grew out of 
the religion of the Hebrews, an ancient people who 
settled in Palestine about 1200 B.C. The latter is a 
collection of writings which tell of a greater religion 
which grew out of the former. The Jewish religion 
was noble and inspiring, but there came a time when 
it shrivelled up. However, just when it looked use- 
less and dead, there suddenly sprang from it, like 
the new growth of heather from the burnt hillside, 
the still more wonderful Christian religion. We 
see, then, that the two Testaments are not of the 
same age; and this is true, not only of the Testa- 
ments as a whole, but also of many of their parts. 
The Bible did not come into existence all at once : 
it grew, and this growth of the Bible is to be the 
subject of our study. We shall endeavour to under- 
stand it by studying some of the greatest crises in 
the long development, and we will begin with the 
important period of the Exodus. To go through 
every part of the story is far too great a task; but 
if we can really learn some of the main events which 
created the Bible and gave it its character, they 
will throw light on all the rest. We shall have 
gained the key to its understanding, and learned 
the secret of its lasting power. 



12 



THE BEGINNINGS 

THE CROSSING OF THE RED SEA 
The Flight from Egypt, near 1200 B.C.— Onward 
with eager haste, through wild and barren land, 
presses a vast throng of men, women, children, and 
cattle. Drivers are shouting at their herds and 
hurrying their horses. Women take tired children 
by the hand to help them along. There a cart with 
broken axle is being rapidly emptied of its richest 
contents. Yonder, waiting for the crowd to pass, 
the vultures are gathered to feast on the body of 
an animal that has fallen and broken its leg. Shout- 
ing, crying, lowing, bleating, this multitude hastens 
southward along the desolate shore of a wide and 
shallow sea. It is a mob of escaped slaves, carrying 
their goods and driving their flocks, with hope of 
freedom in their hearts and fear of capture spur- 
ring them on. It is the children of Israel fleeing 
from the bondage of Egypt. 

As the day wears on their terror deepens. Messen- 
gers have come in with the tidings that a pursuing 
army is fast overtaking them. To make matters 
worse hills are seen ahead blocking the way. At 
last, as night comes on, they find themselves shut 
in between the mountains, the sea, and their pur- 
suers. Everywhere there is an outcry that they have 
been misled and trapped. Moses, their leader, has 

13 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

done some wonderful things : but so far he has 
only brought them into trouble. Now they will 
either be butchered in an unequal conflict, or carried 
back by their conquerors into a bondage made worse 
than ever. 

Deliverance. — Suddenly a message from Moses runs 
from lip to lip : " Stand still, and see the salvation 
of the Lord." His hand is stretched out toward 
the waters, which are rapidly ebbing away. Won- 
dering and amazed, the people watch the retreat- 
ing waves until they are lost in the night. Presently 
the word is given to march into the sea. Across 
the flat stretches of sand, splashing through the 
pools, and struggling over muddy places, the Heb- 
rews make their way like men walking in a sleep, 
dazed by the very wonder of their deliverance. By 
and by they reach rising ground, and with a 
thrill of renewed hope realize that the sea is 
crossed. 

But all is not yet over. As the early dawn throws 
its beams along the track they have followed, the 
light is sent back from the glittering spears of their 
pursuers. The Egyptians, labouring to get their 
chariots through the mud, are slowly advancing. 
Again the Israelites are afraid, but their fear soon 
passes. The wind, which had driven back the waters, 
has ceased to blow. The tide has turned. The waves 
14 



THE BEGINNINGS 

are sweeping up line upon line. 1 The Egyptians see 
their danger, but see it too late. Shouts of dismay 
rise from their ranks. The men throw down their 
arms. They rush for safety. But the waters 
move too swiftly. The salt sea spreads its shroud 
over that mighty army, and the pride of Egypt is 
broken. 

Effect on the Hebrews. — Standing on the sloping 
shore, weary and unnerved with their long march 
and many fears, the Israelites have watched this 
tragedy. Do we wonder that, as a nation, they 
never quite forgot it ? That strange deliverance when 
all seemed lost, and the terrible fate of their enemies, 
sank into their minds. Throughout their history 
this crossing of the Red Sea remained an inspiring 
memory. Its immediate influence is reflected in 
" the Song of Moses," 2 which celebrates the 
triumph. It created a new confidence in their leader. 
It proved to them that Jehovah was able to deliver 
even from the greatest perils. And it filled them 
with faith in their future, with the belief that they 
were to become a great nation by the power of their 
mighty God. 

1 See Ex. xiv. 21 and xv. 10. 

2 See Ex. xv. 1-18. 



15 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

GOD'S COVENANT WITH ISRAEL 

It was late in the thirteenth century before Christ 
when the children of Israel thus escaped from their 
Egyptian bondage. From the Red Sea they fled 
into the desert, and journeyed on, like a tribe of 
wandering Arabs, till they came to Mount Sinai, 
where the greatest event in the history of the 
Hebrews took place, namely, the establishment of 
the Covenant between the nation and Jehovah. 
God speaks to nations through great souls, and this 
Covenant was communicated to the people through 
Moses. He went up into the Mount, tarried there 
in communion with God, and returned with the 
conditions on which the Covenant was to be based. 
God put His thoughts into the mind of His servant, 
and the Covenant expresses those thoughts. It may 
appear to some that the deliverance from Pharoah I 
was more important and wonderful than any revela- 
tion of God's will could possibly be; but we shall - 
see as we go on that it was this Covenant, and the n 
laws in which it was embodied, that made the i 
Hebrews a great nation, and enabled them to give 
the Bible to the world. That is why we call 
this the greatest event in their history. The 
memory of the escape from the Egyptians was 
graven deep in the hearts of the people; but the 
16 



THE BEGINNINGS 

impression made by the Covenant was deeper 
still. 

Acceptance of the Covenant. — Now a covenant is 
a contract, of a more serious nature than ordinary 
business contracts, and entered into in a more bind- 
ing way. In the case of the Israelites it was between 
God and the whole nation. Certain conditions were 
set forth, which they must undertake and fulfil if 
they were to be Jehovah's people; on the other 
hand Jehovah promised that if they fulfilled these 
conditions He would be their God, mighty to deliver 
and full of grace. Moses set these conditions before 
the people and the people accepted them, after which 
the Covenant was publicly confirmed. An altar was 
built beneath the mountain, sacrifices were offered, 
the people pledged themselves to obey God, and the 
Covenant was made binding to the fullest extent. 
Thus Israel became by its own free choice God's 
covenanted people, pledged to the laws which are the 
conditions of the Covenant of Sinai; and Jehovah 
became their covenanted God, bound to them so long 
as they remained obedient to His commands. 

Character of the Covenant. — In Exodus xx. 22- 
xxiii. 33 we have a special section known as * the 
Book of the Covenant,' which contains the Condi- 
tions then laid down. It is more than three thou- 
sand years since Moses died, but that section has 
b 17 

i 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

remained little altered since his time. When it is 
studied the feature which most impresses us is its 
emphasis on man's duty to God and his neighbour. 
There came a time, later, when the Hebrews cared 
only for religious ceremony, and thought that as 
long as they brought plenty of offerings to God's 
temple He would let them do what they liked; but 
the Covenant demanded faithfulness to duty from 
the beginning. It always put obedience before sac- 
rifice. The duties which the Covenant imposed are 
those which make a true and happy national life. 
Its laws are concerned with matters of everyday 
intercourse. They regulate the relations between 
master and servant, neighbour and neighbour, 
stranger and native. They lay down the road along 
which a holy nation must necessarily travel. The 
Book of the Covenant has been likened to Magna 
Carta, the foundation deed of England's liberties. 
The things about which the Hebrew laws are con- 
cerned, however, are not political, but moral. Rever- 
ence, purity, justice, honesty, kindness, truth — these 
are the demands of Israel's Magna Carta. 

The Decalogue. — The Ten Commandments are not 
included in the Book of the Covenant, but are closely 
associated with it. They emphasize the chief duties 
of the Covenant in a form convenient for memoriz- 
ing. Among a people possessed of little or no litera- 
18 



THE BEGINNINGS 

ture, laws must be circulated in a form easy to 
teach and remember. Hence there arose these con- 
cise statements of law known as the Decalogue, all 
of which were originally very brief, as the sixth, 
seventh, and eighth still are. We may look upon 
them, therefore, as a terse summing up of the con- 
ditions of the Covenant, prepared for the common 
people, that every man in Israel might know his 
duty as a member of the chosen people of Jehovah. 
Imperfection of the Covenant. — The laws of the 
Covenant, however, were not perfect. Our Lord 
Jesus Christ referred to one of them 1 when He said : 
" Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, 
and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you, Resist 
not him that is evil : but whosoever smiteth thee on 
thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." 2 He 
thus replaced the imperfect law of the Covenant with 
His own perfect command, and put love in the place 
of vengeance. But though the laws may not have 
been perfect, they all put some check on passion 
and selfishness ; they enforced moral principles fitted 
to make men better, and to lead the nation to health, 
strength, and happiness. 3 

l See Ex. xxi. 24. 2 See Matt. v. 38-39. 

3 The Greek word translated " covenant ' can also be translated 
' testament,' which explains the names given to the two parts of 
our Bible. The Old Testament is the part governed by the 
covenant of Moses : the New Testament is governed by the new 
covenant, the perfect law of Christ. 

19 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

God's Free Choice. — Another important feature of 
the Covenant is the fact that it rested on God's free 
choice. According to it God had made the Israelites 
His people by an act of His own mercy and grace. 
When they entered the Promised Land they found 
nations worshipping other gods; but they never 
found another nation that had been chosen by its 
god. All these nations believed that they could not 
but belong to their gods : the Hebrews knew that 
Jehovah could have chosen an entirely different 
people. The relation of the heathen to their gods 
was natural : between Jehovah and Israel the rela- 
tion was ethical. The natural tie was like blood 
relationship; it was of the body and could not 
be broken : the ethical tie was a moral rela- 
tionship, like that which Paul asked for when he 
said : " Have this mind in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus " : it was a relation of will and would 
be weakened whenever the nation failed in its duty. 
The Moabites, for example, thought that they be- 
longed to their god Chemosh by a natural necessity. 
They regarded him as the ancestor of the tribe, 
and no more able to cast off his people than he could 
cast off his own shadow. But Jehovah was not the 
ancestor of the Hebrews. He was not related to 
them by flesh and blood. He had chosen them, 
and saved them, and they were called to love Him. 
20 



THE BEGINNINGS 

The bonds between the people and Himself were to 
be those of obedience, loyalty, and goodwill. And 
as He had chosen them, so He could cast them off 
if they proved unfaithful. This did not mean that 
Jehovah was less to the Hebrew than Chemosh 
was to the Moabite, or Milcom to the Ammonite; 
but it did mean that to retain Jehovah's favour the 
Hebrew must do His bidding, must fulfil his own 
side of the Covenant. Thus the Covenant spurred 
them on along the path of obedience to God's will. 
Whenever through sin they were in distress and 
wanted Jehovah to save them, they knew that the 
one thing needful to secure His aid was obedience, 
the fulfilment of the Covenant of Sinai. 

A Revelation of God. — Moreover, the command- 
ments and laws of the Covenant embody a great 
revelation of God's character. To these Hebrew 
tribes God had in the past been little more than 
a name : now they were to be taught and trained 
in the knowledge of the Most High. Their escape 
from bondage had shown them God's grace and 
power : grace in that He had had pity on the 
oppressed, and power in that He was able to deliver 
them from their foes. But at Sinai they gained 
also a clear idea of Jehovah's providence and justice. 
There they discovered that the God with Whom they 
had to do was One Who defended the helpless and 

21 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

needy, and Who punished falsehood, cruelty, and 
crime. In many respects their thoughts about God 
were still wrong. For example, long after the time 
of Moses they continued to think of Jehovah as the 
God of their race alone, whereas He is the God of the 
whole earth. But the revelation at Sinai contained 
the great truths of God's righteousness and providen- 
tial rule, which lie at the roots of all true life and 
religion, which were gradually expanded later by the 
prophets, and which find their full expression in the 
Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

More Revelations to Come. — We must notice also 
that the thought of God associated with the Covenant 
was one which actually suggested this idea of growth. 
The very name by which God was made known 
emphasized it. Jehovah stands for s I am ' or ' 1 will 
be.' The words "I am that I am" 1 are better 
translated " I will be that I will be." God wanted 
them to understand that He was more than they yet 
realized. " You know Me as such and such to-day," 
He seemed to say, " but you will know Me as Some- 
one far greater in the future." They were thus led 
to expect further revelations and to look to the 
march of history for a fuller unfolding of the mys- 
teries of God. Jehovah was the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, the God of their past, the Guide 

1 Ex. iii. 14. 
22 



THE BEGINNINGS 

and Saviour of their nation; but He was also the 
God of the future, leading them to larger achieve- 
ments, and showing them through their national 
and individual experiences more and more of the 
glory of His majesty. 1 

THE REMAKING OF ISRAEL IN THE 
WILDERNESS 

After a year's stay at Sinai the Hebrews set out 
on their journey to the Promised Land. This 
journey, which might have been accomplished in 
a few months, lengthened out to something like 
forty years. The Promised Land was occupied by 
races which it was necessary to conquer, but of 
which the Israelites were afraid. They therefore 
turned back into the desert and began their wander- 
ings in the wilderness. It was a keen disappoint- 
ment; but there was no help for it. The genera- 
tion that escaped from Egypt had been reared in 
slavery ; and Israel was not prepared for the invasion 

1 The word ' Jehovah ' is not a correct form. The Hebrew is 
Yahweh. The Jews, however, never pronounce this word, regard- 
ing it as blasphemy to utter the sacred name. In reading aloud 
the Scriptures, therefore, they always substitute for Yahweh their 
word for lord, and in their printed Bibles the vowels of this word 
are inserted with the consonants of Yahioeh to save the reader 
from unguardedly pronouncing the Holy Name. Thus the name 
Jehovah is a conflate form with the consonants of one word and 
the vowels of another. 

23 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of Canaan, nor did she become ready until that gene- 
ration had passed away, and a new one, born in 
freedom and inured to hardship, had taken its place. 
The Work of Moses. — That the Hebrews ever be- 
came fit to attempt the conquest of Palestine was 
mainly due to the work of Moses. Of all the great 
leaders God has given to the world, few have been 
equal to this man, who by God's help accomplished 
three gigantic tasks, any one of which would have 
made him great. First, he inspired his people with 
the hope of freedom, seized the opportunity when 
it arose, and led them out of bondage. Secondly, 
he was the bearer to them of a high and holy revela- 
tion of God's will and character which became a new 
starting-point for the national religion. Thirdly, 
as their leader throughout the wanderings in the 
wilderness, he moulded them into a nation, organiz- 
ing them into a disciplined army, laying down laws 
with the insight of a true statesman, and establish- 
ing impressive religious ceremonies to express the 
revelation God had given him. He was far ahead 
of the people who looked up to him, for they were 
but little removed from heathenism. As a recent 
writer has said : " Their leader was one of the colos- 
sal figures in universal history, and it took many 
centuries to work out into clear consciousness the 
ideals which inspired him and the principles which 
24 



THE BEGINNINGS 

he affirmed." 1 But, however much Moses towered 
above the men of his age, he had a heart full of 
humility and love. He served God with all his might, 
and in serving God he saved his fellow-countrymen. 

Israel Transformed. — Under this leadership of 
Moses, Israel was remade. They came out of Egypt 
a mere throng of more or less related kinsmen, with 
nothing but their common misery and a few tribal 
customs and traditions to hold them together; in 
the desert they grew into an organized people, fired 
with a great faith, and inspired with the sense of a 
great destiny. This growth is especially noticeable 
in three things : their laws, their religion, and their 
manhood. The Covenant provided the foundation 
for these, but throughout the wanderings cases of 
dispute were continually occurring which Moses had 
to settle, and his decisions had the force of law. In- 
deed, in view of all that God had done by him they 
were regarded as of divine authority, as parts of 
the revelation at Sinai on which they were based. 
In those days law and religion went together, so 
that as the law grew the religion grew. Such reli- 
gious customs as they possessed before the Exodus 
were modified and improved by Moses, and new ones 
were added as he thought necessary. The develop- 
ment of their manhood went forward at the same 
l Dr Peake's The Bible, etc., p. 283. 

25 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

time. The men and women were impressed by the 
new laws, by the religious customs, and by the order 
and discipline. The dangers and unexpected hap- 
penings of desert life were moulding them. The 
great personality of Moses was a constant source of 
enthusiasm and courage. Above all they were face 
to face with the mighty acts of God. Their religion 
was not only taught them by Moses : they saw its 
great truths enacted before their eyes. That they 
were a chosen people, that they had a great destiny, 
that Jehovah ruled over nature, that He judged the 
oppressor — these things were clear to every man in 
the events by which they had been delivered from 
Pharaoh. God inspired in wondrous measure many 
of the Hebrews ; but we shall see as we follow their 
story that it was through the facts of their national 
experience even more than through the words of 
individuals that God revealed Himself and gave us 
the Old Testament. This is already clear in the story 
of the wanderings. The great acts of God, and the 
other ennobling influences mentioned, gradually pro- 
duced their effect and greatly uplifted the character 
of Israel. The timid fugitives who turned back 
through fear were replaced by Joshua's bold warriors. 
The mob of escaped slaves became a heroic nation. 
Non-Mosaic Elements. — In looking back upon the 
events of the wilderness, however, we must not make 
26 



THE BEGINNINGS 

the mistake of supposing that everything belonging 
to Israel's law and religion began with Moses. No 
great religion is entirely new. Christianity sprang 
out of Judaism. Buddhism is an offshoot of the 
ancient religion of India. Mohammedanism has its 
roots in the Old Testament. Likewise the religion 
that Moses established gathered up into itself much 
that had gone before. The system of sacrifice, the 
distinction between things clean and unclean, the 
rite of circumcision — these were already in use, 
and by heathen races as well as Hebrews. Similarly, 
Moses and the Israelites made use of all the learning 
they possessed concerning law, justice, organization, 
trades, arts, commerce, etc. The stories of the 
training of Moses, first in the schools of Egypt and 
then in the desert of Midian, and of the advice of 
Jethro, 1 suggest a few channels through which ideas 
and customs derived from other races may have 
been brought at that time into Israel. 

The Patriarchs. — In addition to all this there were 
the traditions of their own earlier history. The 
question might be asked : Where at that time were 
the stories we have in Genesis of Abraham, Isaac, 
Jacob, and Joseph? The answer is that they were 
among the recollections which the suffering slaves 
in Egypt treasured in their memories. It was to 
1 Ex. xviii. 

27 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

these that Moses appealed, and without them he 
would probably have failed to rouse Israel to at- 
tempt her escape. Then again, every people or 
tribe has its favourite and familiar stories. Mothers 
would tell their children the adventures of Joseph, 
and men would speak, as they gathered together 
after the day's toil, of Abraham's journeys. Then, 
too, love of the hero is early developed in the heart 
of a people, as is well pictured by Macaulay : 

And in the nights of winter, 

When the cold north winds blow, 
And the long howling of the wolves 

Is heard amidst the snow ; 
When round the lonely cottage 

Roars loud the tempest's din, 
And the good logs of Algidus 

Roar louder yet within ; 

When young and old in circle 

Around the firebrands close; 
When the girls are weaving baskets, 

And the lads are shaping bows ; 

With weeping and with laughter 

Still is the story told, 
How well Horatius kept the bridge 

In the brave days of old. 

The situation recalled in these words is very different 
from desert life, but the spirit they express exists 
28 



THE BEGINNINGS 

everywhere, and in that spirit the doings of the 
heroes and founders of the Hebrew nation were saved 
from being lost. Story-telling is largely practised 
wherever books are little used : it is common to-day 
among the Bedouins : and throughout the wander- 
ings in the wilderness we can picture the children 
of Israel at night, round camp-fires and in their 
tents, telling these stories of the past. Thus their 
own earlier history and the customs of other races 
contributed much to the new start which Israel made 
in the desert. 

Joshua and the Conquest. — At last Moses felt that 
his people were ready to go in and possess the Pro- 
mised Land, so he led them back to the borders of 
Canaan. The time for conquest had come. The 
Lawgiver and Leader had done his work : now was 
the opportunity for the military man, the great 
captain. Moses died in the solitudes of Mount Nebo 
and the task of leadership fell to Joshua the general. 
By much bold campaigning he led Israel to victory 
after victory, until a strong position was gained in 
Palestine. It is a revelation of the change that had 
come over the Israelites during their wanderings to 
recall their victory at the waters of Merom. After 
they had overrun the South they learned that fear 
of them was uniting the peoples of the North, and 
that a great alliance was preparing to drive them back 

29 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

into the deserts. They therefore marched without 
delay straight up the Jordan valley, fell suddenly 
upon the confederates, and utterly routed them. A 
comparison of this confident and disciplined force, 
marching out from Gilgal, with the panic-stricken 
mob which we saw rushing helter-skelter along the 
shore of the Red Sea, will give us some idea of the ex- 
tent to which Israel was recreated in the wilderness. 
We must be careful, however, not to over-estimate 
the conquest of Canaan. The Book of Judges shows 
us that the old inhabitants remained in large 
numbers. Under Joshua the Israelites made good 
their footing in the land, and secured the hills, from 
which they were never driven; but the Canaanites 
retained the large cities in the valleys, the Philis- 
tines held the coast, other tribes were scattered over 
various parts, and for two centuries it remained 
uncertain which race would become the ruling nation. 
As long as Joshua lived the Israelites held the upper 
hand, because he could always gather the tribes to- 
gether : but after his death they were often severely 
oppressed by their neighbours, until they were res- 
cued by one of the ' judges,' 1 who succeeded in 
uniting some of the scattered tribes in the name of 
Jehovah and in breaking down the tyranny. 

l Not a judge in the modern sense, but a person who helped his 
people to deliverance, and who also did something to revive or 
purify the worship of Jehovah. 
30 



THE BEGINNINGS 

RELATION TO THE BIBLE 

Preparing Materials. — We must now consider how 
these beginnings of the nation and its religion are 
related to the Bible. A moment's thought will bring 
home to us the fact that during this period the Bible 
did not exist. Israel's religion did not grow out of 
the Old Testament, but the Old Testament out of 
Israel's religion. The only possessions of the kind 
in the hands of the Hebrews at the end of the period 
we have surveyed were the Commandments and the 
Covenant. Yet the incidents of this period form an 
important part of the contents of the Bible. Per- 
haps the best way to put it is to say that these were 
ages of preparation : as the brickmakers, stone- 
quarriers, timber-cutters, etc., in different parts of 
the world, prepare materials out of which others 
may build a church in London, so these early 
Hebrews were shaping and preparing what others 
in later days gathered and wrote. By the habit of 
story-telling the outstanding events of the Wander- 
ings and the Conquest were handed on to succeed- 
ing generations, just as the wanderers themselves 
handed on the stories of the Patriarchs. The setting 
up of memorials was another method of recording 
events and preparing materials for the Bible : a 
pillar, a mound of stones, a mark on some giant 

31 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

tree, or a new name for a village would serve to 
memorialize some great happening or experience. 
Here a difficulty was passed ; here a battle won ; 
here a wanderer found a home ; and here some man 
felt drawn into the very presence of Jehovah. 1 In 
some cases a further step was taken, as when some- 
one with a genius for poetry composed a song con- 
cerning an event. Songs are among the earliest 
literary creations of a people. They are specially 
good means of keeping a memory fresh, and several 
of them, like the Song of Moses and the Children 
of Israel, celebrating the escape from Egypt, are 
included in the Old Testament. In these and other 
ways, then, the wandering Hebrews were preparing 
materials for the Great Book. 

Hebrew Distinctions. — But while all this may be 
regarded as material for the Bible, let us realize 
that the main preparation lay in a few things which 
distinguished Israel from the surrounding nations. 
Other races had their memorials and stories, their 
sacrifices and songs, yet no other race found out 
and taught men so much about God as the Hebrews. 
This teaches us to look for the special value of 
Israel, not in the things which it borrowed from 
others, but in the things which were peculiar to 

l For illustrations see respectively Josh, i v. 20-22; 1 Sam. vii. 12; 
Gen. xiii. 18; Gen. xxviii. 18-19. 

32 



THE BEGINNINGS 

itself. And the chief of these peculiarities are in- 
cluded in three great facts : first, the Hebrews had 
received a nobler idea of God, which condemned 
the degrading rites of heathen religions and gradu- 
ally lifted Israel above them ; second, the Covenant 
taught them the sense of duty, taught them that 
they could expect Jehovah's aid only as long as 
they fulfilled their obligations to God and man; 
and third, they possessed, as a nation, more good 
men who loved God and served Him even at the 
cost of their lives than any other people. In this 
chapter we have traced the beginnings of all these. 
We have seen their idea of God forming as Jehovah 
revealed Himself in the deliverance at the Red Sea, 
and in the revelation at Sinai ; we have noticed how 
the Covenant emphasized moral conduct and de- 
manded obedience; and we have found in Moses 
a splendid example of the servant of God. Indeed, 
Moses may be said to illustrate all three points: 
for in him especially do we find a higher thought 
of God, a stronger sense of duty, and a complete 
devotion to God's cause. He gathered up into him- 
self and expressed in his grand endeavours all those 
peculiarities which made the Israelites the world's 
teachers of religion, and enabled them to produce 
the Old Testament. 



CHAPTER II 
THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

1. Elijah's Conflict with the Priests of Baal 

2. The National Apostasy. Causes — 

Purity of Jehovah-worship 

Corruption of Former Inhabitants : — these Races not De- 
stroyed — their Idolatries — Influence on Israel — the 
Rechabites- Jehovah-worship Triumphant but Degraded 

Foreign Influences : — Alliances of the Kings — Persecution 
by Jezebel — the Failure of the Priests 

3. Preservation of the National Faith. Secured by — 

Racial Character of Faith in Jehovah 

Revival and " Schools of Prophets." False Prophets 

The Work of the Great Prophets 

The Task of Prophecy. Elijah an Example 

THERE was unbroken drought in Israel : 
the fields were withered, and the finest 
springs nearly dry. The last two harvests 
had been scanty, and all promise for the present year 
was destroyed. Throughout the land people were 
suffering and dying of hunger and thirst. Even in 
the palace of King Ahab there was want. The 
horses in the royal stables were starving, and an 
officer was sent out to get provender at all 
costs. 
34 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

Elijah and King Ahab, about 860 B.C. — This official 
in the course of his search met a man, clad in the 
rough garments of the desert, who sent him back 
to fetch the king. He obeyed, although in fear, 
because he knew this man to be the great prophet 
Elijah. Now Elijah had foretold the famine, and 
the king blamed him for it and wanted to put him 
to death. When, therefore, Ahab heard where the 
prophet was he came in great anger, and at once 
began : "Is it thou, thou troubler of Israel ? " 
" I have not troubled Israel," retorted Elijah 
(1 Kings xviii 18), throwing back the blame 
upon the king, " but thou, and thy father's house, 
in that ye have forsaken the commandments 
of the Lord, and thou hast followed the 
Baalim." 

They were bold words, but Elijah was speaking 
for Him Who is above all kings; he therefore 
fearlessly denounced the idol-worship which Ahab 
practised, and declared the famine to be a punish- 
ment for this wickedness, and a proof that the 
Baalim could not send rain. Then the prophet 
daringly challenged the king and all his idols. He 
said that if Ahab would gather the people and the 
priests of his false gods to Carmel, he would face 
them and prove to all Israel that Jehovah was God 
alone. 

35 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Scene on Carmel. — Carmel is a mountain in 
the west of Palestine, close to the Mediterranean 
Sea, from which it runs back in a south-easterly 
direction for nearly thirteen miles. There it ends 
abruptly in a valley which divides it from the hills 
of central Palestine. It is a beautiful mountain, 
not bare and rocky, but clothed in rich vegetation. 
On this prominent height, sacred as an ancient place 
of worship, the idolatrous prophets were gathered, 
four hundred of them or more. There also were the 
people of the countryside, hungry and angry, looking 
fiercely at the man who was blamed for their distress. 
And there was Elijah, standing apart, the man who, 
for the sake of his God and his country, was daring 
the wrath of the people and king. He knew there 
would be no escape for him that day if he failed ; but 
he did not hesitate. Let the prophets of Baal pre- 
pare an altar, and lay upon it a bullock for sacrifice. 
Elijah alone would prepare another. " And call ye 
on the name of your god," ran the prophet's chal- 
lenge, " and I will call on the name of the Lord : and 
the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God." 

Elijah's Victory. — The result is well known. The 
prophets of Baal cried and leaped round their altar ; 
in their frenzy they gashed their bodies with knives. 
"But there was no voice, nor any that answered." 
Elijah mocked their failure. " Cry aloud," he 
36 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

called; " peradventure he sleepeth"; and loudly 
they cried, but all in vain. The afternoon passed, 
and the time came for the evening offering. The 
prophets of Baal had failed ; and the people eagerly 
watched Elijah to see what he would do. Calmly 
he built his altar, and prepared his sacrifice. Then 
he bowed in prayer before the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob. A great silence fell on the multi- 
tude, and the air was filled with that dread stillness 
which precedes a storm. Excitement gripped the 
crowd and held it spellbound. Suddenly the storm 
which had been gathering while Elijah prayed burst 
upon them. A flame flashed from the heavens, 
struck the altar, and utterly consumed the sacrifice. 

The Lord had answered by fire. 

It was the crowning moment in Elijah's ministry. 
His faith in Jehovah was vindicated. The falseness 
of Baal- worship stood exposed. In the vivid light 
that flashed from the sky the people saw it was not 
Elijah that had caused their sufferings, but the 
idolatries to which they had been tempted by the 
heathen priests. And with that revulsion of feeling, 
so terrible in an angry crowd, they turned, led by 
Elijah himself, upon the prophets of Baal and de- 
stroyed them. That night the drought ended in 
abundance of rain. 



37 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

THE NATIONAL APOSTASY 
What is the meaning of this great scene? How 
came it to pass that four hundred devotees of a 
foreign religion could be summoned together by 
Israel's king, while the God of Israel was repre- 
sented by one solitary man? Had the Hebrews 
lost the faith with which they entered Palestine? 
No, for the sequel shows how Elijah was aroused 
from a fit of depression by the reminder that there 
were still seven thousand in Israel, " all the knees 
which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth 
which hath not kissed him." But the people had 
so mixed up idolatry with their religion that nearly 
all had practically ceased to worship Jehovah; 
otherwise this scene on Carmel could never have 
taken place. So let us now trace briefly this wan- 
dering from the God of their fathers. We shall find 
in it an explanation of Elijah's position, and we 
shall see that his work is typical of the labour done 
by all the prophets who taught and suffered in 
Israel. 

Purity of Jehovah- Worship. — The decline in the 
worship of Jehovah was partly due to the very 
beauty and value of the religion itself. There was 
plenty of room for improvement in it, but with 
all its imperfections it was far above the religions 
38 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

of the nations around; history showed that it was 
also far above the desires of the Hebrews them- 
selves. Such a faith demanded effort, courage, and 
self-restraint, and many were not willing to make 
the effort. They were careless about their best 
things and therefore they lost them. Thus the very 
purity of Jehovah worship, the one thing which 
made it worth struggling for, made it more difficult 
to retain. The people were not worthy of their 
God. 

Opposing Influences. — This of itself, however, 
would not have robbed Israel of its religion. The 
nobler men would have been sufficient to carry the 
nation upward, had it not been that there were 
false, heathen religions ever competing with the 
national faith. The nation was like a heavily laden 
boat, which a few men are trying to row up a swift 
river. In spite of her weight the strong men at the 
oars would have pulled her forward, if only slowly, 
but for the current carrying her down faster 
than they could row her up the stream. This 
current, against which Jehovah-worship had to 
contend, was made up of many tributary influences. 
We have not space to study them all, but we 
can trace the main ones sufficiently to make 
clear the perils which threatened the life and religion 
of Israel. 

39 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Struggle for Mastery, 1200-1000 B.C.— The 
first group of influences opposed to Jehovah-worship 
was made up of the idolatry, witchcraft, sensuality, 
and superstition of the races which inhabited Pales- 
tine before the Hebrews. Those nations were neither 
driven out nor destroyed by the Israelites. The 
Canaanites retained the great cities of central Pales- 
tine, the Philistines became stronger and stronger 
along the coast, and other races held various dis- 
tricts. The Hebrews had gained the hill country 
and were never dislodged, but scattered over those 
highlands and separated by deep valleys they were 
in a weak, divided state, which made them an easy 
prey to any vigorous enemy. Their foes were quick 
to take advantage of this. From their fortified 
cities below, the Canaanites crept out to plunder and 
destroy the villages on the hills, until in desperation 
six of the tribes united under Deborah and Barak 1 
and inflicted upon them a crushing defeat. In 
similar fashion the Philistines raided the towns and 
villages nearer the coast, and so sorely pressed the 
Danites that a large part of the tribe gave up the 
attempt to colonize the territory given them by 
Joshua, and migrated to the north, where they 
established themselves in a new district. 2 Samson, 
the hero of many strange adventures, 3 achieved his 

1 Judges v. and vi. 2 Judges xviii. 3 Judges xiii.-xvi. 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

exploits in these early struggles with the Philistines. 
In the land to the east of the Jordan valley the old 
inhabitants were a constant peril. At the Dead Sea 
end of this eastern strip lived the Moabites who be- 
came oppressors soon after Joshua's time, and 
plundered Israel until Ehud the Benjamite broke 
their power. 1 Northward of Moab, in Gilead and 
Bashan, the territory of Gad and Manasseh, the 
Ammonites had held the ground : these gradually 
acquired strength to assert themselves, and were 
only put down after a grim struggle under Jephthah, 
whose victory was marred by the sacrifice of his 
daughter, an only child. Farther eastward, in the 
deserts, dwelt the Midianites, whose incursions at 
one time became an annual feature, making it use- 
less to rear crops and herds, so sure were they to 
be swept away by these robbers. They were not 
inhabitants of the country, but neighbours, who 
were only dangerous when Israel lay in a weak and 
defenceless state, as in the days when God called 
Gideon to deliver it from their power. Thus the 
struggle went on for generations, and in the end 
Israel won. The victory, however, was only ob- 
tained by taking into the nation the conquered 
population, which belonged to other races and 
worshipped other gods. 

l Judges iii. 12-30. 

41 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Conflict of Religions. The Baalim. — All through 
this struggle for place and power another conflict 
was in progress — that between the faith of Israel 
and the religion of these older inhabitants. Most 
of the latter were worshippers of the Baalim. 
Baalim, the plural of Baal, meaning lord or owner, 
was the name given by the Canaanites to their local 
deities. Each district had its Baal or owner, who 
was supposed to own the streams, give or withhold 
rain, and thus control the fertility of the land. 
Images of the Baalim were set up in the high places 
and worshipped with rites which encouraged all 
manner of wickedness. When the Hebrews mixed 
with the Canaanites they soon fell under the in- 
fluence of this corrupting worship. They did so 
all the more quickly because their life in Canaan 
was completely new. In the deserts they had been 
nomads, wandering from one place to another as 
soon as their cattle had eaten up the grass or when- 
ever fancy urged them. But in their new home they 
became farmers, cultivating the land properly, build- 
ing houses, and living in the same place year after 
year. Hence the fertility of the soil became their 
chief care, and they began to imitate the Canaanites, 
from whom they learnt much of their farming, in 
worshipping the Baalim who were supposed to be 
able to cause or prevent this fertility. 
42 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

Perils of a New Life. Rechabites. — They did not, 
however, give up their own religion. Jehovah was 
still their national God. But they accepted the idea 
that the Baalim had power over the land, the crops, 
and the herds. Thus they tried to hold two reli- 
gions at the same time, with the result that the 
better one suffered. They came to think of Jehovah 
as merely a greater Baal, the owner of their race, 
just as the local Baal was thought to own the dis- 
trict. They worshipped idols at the local shrines. 
They practised divination and sorcery. In times of 
great emergency they even offered human sacrifice, 
as the case of Jephthah shows. An earnest effort 
to maintain Jehovah-worship was made only in very 
faithful homes and in special sanctuaries like Gilgal 
and Shiloh. The Rechabites, described in Jeremiah 
xxxv, illustrate how a determined Israelite may 
have looked at the life of Canaan and tried to save 
his family from its influence. The ancestor of this 
clan was so alarmed at the corruption that he com- 
manded that his descendants should never live in 
houses, but keep to their tents and have nothing to 
do with tilling the soil ; that is, they were to keep up 
their desert ways of living. Most of the Hebrews, 
however, soon settled down and felt the full force of 
the heathen environment. Yet in this, as in the 
struggle for political mastery, Israel triumphed. 

43 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Faith in Jehovah survived the ordeal. When at last 
the monarchy was established under Israelitish kings, 
it was the worship of Jehovah, and not Baal-worship, 
which remained as the recognized religion of Israel. 
Degradation of Hebrews. — Jehovah-worship tri- 
umphed, but it suffered in the conflict. It had be- 
come mixed up with all sorts of heathen practices. 
Most of the people no longer saw anything wrong 
in idolatry. They looked to the Ark of Jehovah to 
save them in battle just as the Philistines looked to 
their idol Dagon. 1 They shared in the wild and 
wicked celebrations at the high places. The first 
king of Israel, Saul, consulted the witch of Endor, 
although he is said to have expelled previously all 
such fortune-tellers. David, the second king, was 
glad to make use of the ephod 2 of a priest, believ- 
ing that by this means he could get to know some- 
thing about his future. Jeroboam, the leader of the 
revolt which split Israel into two kingdoms, actu- 
ally set up bulls as images of Jehovah, and made 
idol-worship part of the official religion. He may 
have been trying to strengthen Jehovah- worship, but 

1 See 1 Sam. iy. 

2 See 1 Sam. xxiii. 6-13; xxx. 7-9. The word ' ephod ' some- 
times refers to a priestly garment, and sometimes, apparently, to an 
image. But the image was supposed to give oracles, and with the 
garment there went a pocket containing materials for drawing the 
sacred lot, Urim and Thummim. Thus in either case the ephod 
was used for purposes of divination. 

44 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

his images helped to hide all distinction between 
Hebrew and Canaanite beliefs, and greatly strength- 
ened the power of idolatry in the land, for which 
cause he was afterward spoken of as " the man 
who made Israel to sin." All these facts show how 
deeply tainted with heathenism the worship of 
Jehovah had become. The spiritual side of the work 
of Moses was for the time being almost lost. It re- 
mained for the prophets to rediscover and complete it. 
Corruption from Abroad. — So far we have spoken 
of the evil influence of the former inhabitants, 
especially the Canaanites; but as the nation de- 
veloped it came into contact with other races, and 
these also helped to shape its religious history. The 
monarchy was established as the only way of meet- 
ing the repeated attacks of the Philistines. All the 
other oppressors mentioned in Judges were defeated 
once and for all by some desperate effort under a 
great leader, but the Philistines retired only to come 
again. Year after year they renewed their inroads, 
until at last the Hebrews chose a permanent leader, 
under whose continual guidance they should be able 
to deal effectively with their foes. Thus Saul was 
chosen king, and seems to have carried out well his 
patriotic task. David followed him in the king- 
ship, still in troubled times, and was so success- 
ful as a warrior that he made Israel a large and 

45 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

powerful nation. David, however, in his adventurous 
career, was glad at times to make friends with other 
rulers. Solomon, his more statesmanlike son and 
successor, formed a strong alliance with the Phoeni- 
cians whose land lay to the north of Palestine. His 
son Rehoboam came to the throne about 940 B.C. 
Immediately northern Israel revolted and set up a 
separate kingdom under Jeroboam, leaving only two 
of the twelve tribes to the kingdom of Judah. From 
that time onward we find the kings of these little 
states constantly turning for support to one and 
another of the neighbouring rulers. Such alliances 
were natural to men who trusted in man rather than 
God, but like all faithless acts they had disastrous 
consequences. They opened the door to fresh in- 
fluences of a heathen kind. Solomon, having married 
foreign wives, allowed them to bring heathen priests 
and practise their religions in Jerusalem. The kings 
of the North, following Jeroboam in his idolatry, did 
not hesitate to let the nations with which they were 
friendly send their priests and idols into the land. 
And so it came to pass that when King Ahab married 
Jezebel, a princess of Tyre, he allowed her to do 
what she liked in the matter of religion. 

Jezebel's Persecution. — Now Jezebel was a strong- 
minded woman, with a great desire to glorify the 
faith of her own people. She therefore set to work, 
46 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

not only to build a temple where she herself might 
worship her Tyrian god, Baal, but also to compel 
the Israelites to worship him. The priests at the 
sanctuaries of Jehovah had either to adopt and 
practise this foreign Baal-worship along with their 
own worship of Jehovah, or to be turned out and 
have their places taken by priests from Jezebel's 
country. Most of them readily agreed to the new 
demands. The people, already corrupted with 
idolatry, willingly tolerated the addition of a form 
of religion which had behind it the influence of the 
royal house. But there were some who opposed the 
new idolatry, who would not put Baal beside 
Jehovah; and these were ruthlessly persecuted. 
The worship of Jehovah, as such, Jezebel did not 
mind; but when the servants of Jehovah refused 
to tolerate her Baal, then she showed no mercy. 
Thus persecution raged. As Elijah put it in his 
prayer : " The children of Israel have forsaken Thy 
Covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy 
prophets with the sword." 

Failure of the Priests. — The readiness with which 
the Tyrian Baal-worship was adopted in the sanctu- 
aries brings us to what was the greatest tragedy of 
all in the religious life of IsTael : the failure of her 
priests. The very men to whom was given the task 
of teaching and preserving the worship of Jehovah 

47 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

proved unfaithful. Often, like the sons of Eli, they 
turned their sacred office into a means of exacting 
money from the worshippers. And when dark days 
of persecution came, and the ruling classes turned 
to corrupt ways, usually the priests were the first 
to follow, uttering no rebuke; and even outraging 
God's temples by setting up in them the idols of the 
heathen. Instead of resisting courtly influence and 
popular clamour, they pandered to the weaknesses 
of high and low. The priesthood, which ought to 
have been the most ennobling influence in Israel, was 
the chief instrument of her corruption. 

PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL FAITH 

The God of the Race. — The wonder is that, with 
all these influences fighting against their faith, the 
Israelites continued to worship Jehovah at all. The 
chief reason why they did so was that they looked up 
to Jehovah as the God of their race. The Baalim 
might be the gods of the hills and valleys where the 
Hebrews had come to live, but the nation belonged 
to Jehovah. Their national customs were based on 
this faith. Jehovah had given them their laws. 
Every man among them had been consecrated in 
childhood to the God of his fathers. Even when 
they worshipped the idols of the land or of foreigners, 
48 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

they still clung to the notion that in a special sense 
Jehovah was the God of their race, " the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. " It was this faith 
which in the times of the Judges enabled them to 
break the yoke of many a tyrant. It was 
the one bond of union between the scattered 
tribes. And although in times of peace they might 
forget their duties to Jehovah, there was always 
some sacred place where the attempt was made 
to worship Him according to the commandments of 
Moses. 

Revival. ' Schools of Prophets/ — A new zeal for 
the religion of Jehovah was created, however, to- 
ward the close of the period of the Judges. It was 
probably a result of the Philistine oppression. We 
have already seen how this tyranny led to the estab- 
lishment of the monarchy, but before Saul was 
called to the throne it had already produced another 
and very different result. It excited among the 
Israelites a warm religious and patriotic enthusiasm. 
Companies of men called 6 bands ' or • schools ' of 
„ prophets began to traverse the country, often in a 
state of ecstasy, rousing the people in the name of 
Jehovah to throw off the Philistine yoke. We may 
liken them to bands of Mohammedan dervishes 
preaching a holy war. The fact is, the long-drawn- 
out struggle of the Judges period was teaching Israel 
d 49 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the value of its faith. God revealed Himself to the 
nation through its sufferings and needs, as well as 
through the lips of the prophets. In the dark ages 
of conflict and oppression the Hebrews were being 
taught to appreciate the things of God, and the pro- 
phetic bands were signs of this deepening apprecia- 
tion. It appears that Samuel, though not himself 
a member of such a band, had some influence in this 
movement, and attached 6 schools of the prophets ' 
to religious centres like Bethel, Jericho, and Gilgal, 
and set them to proclaim the duties of faith in 
Jehovah. Thus there arose a movement which de- 
finitely aimed at leading Israel back from the idola- 
tries of the Baalim to a purer religion. We know 
very little about these schools, but we find them 
later associated with Elijah and Elisha, and it was 
probably their members who most bitterly opposed 
the foreign Baal-worship of Jezebel, and suffered 
most in the persecution she directed against those 
who refused to bow to her god. 

False Prophets. — In later times these schools of 
the prophets became a professional class, and were 
often the worst enemies of the true prophets. This 
was when they had become popular, and men joined 
them for the sake of earning a living. Then they 
prophesied ' smooth things ' to please the people, 
took bribes, and were well described as ' false pro- 
50 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

phets.' But in the early part of their history they 
served a great purpose : for they lit the lamp of 
prophecy in a dark age, and gave their support to 
a number of mighty, prophetic leaders. These out- 
standing prophets were distinguished from the others 
by the title ' seer ' or ' man of God.' But gradu- 
ally these titles dropped out of use and the word 
prophet was applied only to the exceptional man 
with a special message. 

Work of the Great Prophets. — The attempts of the 
prophetic bands to arouse Israel by appealing to the 
national faith in Jehovah did much good, but it is 
in the light of the efforts of the great prophets to 
destroy the corrupting influences of heathenism 
that we shall understand the real task of prophecy. 
When the people turned to idolatry, and the priests 
encouraged what they ought to have resisted, God 
sent His prophets to wrestle with both priests and 
people. He called them from all classes : some 
were priests who had not, like the rest, disgraced 
their calling by becoming time-servers; others were 
prominent statesmen; others again were farmers. 
A group of men more unlike one another could 
scarcely be imagined. But they were all alike in 
this : that they loved God more than their own lives, 
and because they loved Him and lived near to Him, 
God put His thoughts into their hearts and made 

51 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

them see how terrible would be the consequences if 
the people continued in their sins. Then, when they 
felt this so keenly that they could no longer refrain 
from speech, they uttered their burning message. 
They came forward as the champions of the national 
faith against all heathen practices and idolatry. 
In the name of Jehovah they denounced or directed 
the conduct even of kings. They attacked the time- 
serving priests. They especially sought to destroy 
false ideas of Jehovah by showing that righteous- 
ness was the requirement of the national Covenant 
with Him and the chief condition of His favour. To 
stem the tide of corrupt religion, to denounce faith- 
less priests, to rebuke wicked kings and princes, to 
expose unrighteousness wherever they found it, to 
warn the nation of the consequences of its sin, and 
to summon one and all to repent and turn to the 
Lord — this was the task of prophecy. 

To that great work God called in ancient Israel 
a long line of heroes, the equal of whom the world 
has never known. Such were Samuel who called Saul 
to the throne ; Nathan and Gad who rebuked David ; 
Ahijah who denounced the sins of Jeroboam ; Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, and all those whose names are familiar in 
the titles of their prophecies. Such also was the 
great Elijah, the God-appointed scourge of Ahab's 
house and the untiring foe of foreign idol-worship. 
52 



THE TASK OF PROPHECY 

Elijah an Example. — The great effort at Carmel 
was but the supreme crisis in a life of the kind we 
have been describing. Elijah stood alone because 
the priests, who ought to have fought that battle, 
had weakened Jehovah's cause by making room for 
Baal. He stood there to struggle in the name of 
God against the corrupt influence of the royal 
family, against the time-serving spirit of the priest- 
hood, and against the indifference of the nation. 
The next day he had to flee for his life from the 
murderous vengeance of Jezebel. But he had not 
failed. He had sounded aloud in Israel once more 
the rallying cry of faith in the God of their fathers. 
He had startled the national conscience into new- 
ness of life. He had made Israel feel afresh the 
hollowness of her idols and the majesty and might 
of Jehovah. He had attempted and, for the time, 
nobly achieved the task of prophecy. 



58 



CHAPTER III 
WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

1. Amos at Bethel 

What the Story Emphasizes 

2. The Nature of Prophecy 

Foretelling not the Main Purpose 

The Prophets were Preachers of Righteousness to their 

Own Times 
They were Limited by the Ideas of their Age 
Their Teaching a Gradual Growth 
The Temporary and the Timeless in their Teaching 

3. Prophetic Writings 

Amos Writes His Book. Power of a Book 
Other Prophetic Writers * Historical ' and * Writing ' 
Prophets 

4. Other Early Writings 

Books which are Known to have been in Use 
Books since Incorporated in the Bible 
Fulfilment of Amos's Prediction 

OPEN a map of Palestine and find Bethel on 
the northern boundary of Benjamin, ten 
miles due north of Jerusalem. If your map 
shows the old roads you will see that Bethel is a place 
on which many highways converge. To the south 
runs that to Jerusalem, and branching from this, 
westward, is the main route to the coast at Joppa. 
To the east we have the way through Michmash to 
54 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

Jericho in the Jordan valley. To the north-west is 
another highway to the coast plain through Gophna. 
Due north, along the main mountain ridge, runs the 
great road to Shechem, Galilee, and Syria, and at 
the time of which we shall speak in this chapter, 
this was the most important of all, for it was the 
direct route past Gilgal and Shiloh and through 
Shechem — all places with great memories — to 
Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of 
Israel, some twenty-seven miles distant. 

A Sacred Festival about 760 B.C. — Along those 
roads and over the fields between, one bright 
morning in the far past, might have been seen 
groups of people, hurrying with the eager- 
ness of those who hasten to some long antici- 
pated pleasure. They were men, women, and 
children, but the great majority were men : 
for the crowds were great and the weak or timid 
held back. Occasionally the groups were varied by 
riders on asses coming in from the more distant 
villages, or by a caravan which had travelled for 
days. It was very like the gathering of an English 
crowd for some annual festival or fair, when shows 
and games of all sorts abound and acrobats perform 
before delighted audiences. In view of this, it may 
seem strange to say that these people were going 
to a religious ceremony. Yet such was the case. 

55 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

A great and sacred festival was the occasion, and 
the travellers were pilgrims. But at that time this 
people mixed with their religion all the amusements 
they loved and most of their vices, turning holy 
feasts into seasons of exciting pleasure and wicked- 
ness. Many took advantage of this to make 
money by catering for the lowest passions. Worst 
of all, the temple priests and city rulers looked 
on with indifference, and shared in the ill-gotten 
gains. 

Quickly the crowds assembled for the ceremony, 
and the temple became thronged. The Bible does 
not describe the scene in detail, but we can imagine 
what happened. Before the priests appeared, a man 
pushed his way to the front, ascended the steps 
leading up to the altar, and turned to confront the 
sea of astonished faces. He bore no traces of official 
position. He wore no priestly robe. A farmer's 
cloak hung from his shoulder, and the long naked 
arm, which he stretched out as he began an impas- 
sioned speech, was bronzed with exposure to wind 
and sun. " Who is that ? " " What's he doing up 
there ? " ran the eager and half-indignant questions, 
and from a few scattered among the thousands the 
answer quickly spread, " It is Amos, the prophet, 
who has been preaching through the countryside 
that God is angry and is going to punish us." But 
56 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

question and answer died away as every ear was 
strained to catch the fiery words of the man on the 
altar steps. 

A Prophet's Address. — " Hear this word that the 
Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel," 
he began. 1 " An adversary there shall be even 
round about the land : and he shall bring down thy 
strength from thee, and thy palaces shall be spoiled. 
It is true that you are God's chosen nation, but you 
are not living as God's people should, and Jehovah 
is saying, Shall two walk together except they have 
agreed ? Hear this word, ye that put far away the 
evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near ; 
that afflict the just, that take a bribe, that turn 
aside the needy in the gate from his right; thus 
saith the Lord : As the shepherd rescueth out of the 
mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so 
shall the children of Israel be rescued that sit in 
Samaria in the corner of a couch, and on the silken 
cushions of a bed. 

" Vain are your pilgrimages while your lives are 
full of sin. It is easy to come to Bethel and bring 
sacrifices, but Jehovah asks for righteousness, not 
ritual. ' I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will 
take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Woe to 

l The speech here given is simply a free treatment of the 
prophet's teaching, mainly composed of extracts. 

57 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

them that are at ease in Zion; that lie upon beds 
of ivory, and eat the lambs out of the flock; but 
they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.' 
Your soulless luxury God will reward with ruin, 
slavery, and death. The day of judgment is at hand. 
For escape there is but one way : it is the way of 
repentance. Seek ye me, and ye shall live. Let 
judgment roll down as waters and righteousness as 
a mighty stream." 

The prophet went on to say that, although he had 
proclaimed this message to many, the people were 
at ease, and took no notice of his call. Therefore 
he had come that day to interrupt their empty ser- 
vice and make them listen to God. 1 Already judg- 
ment had begun. The plague of locusts after the 
king's mowings was one of God's punishments, but 
he had prayed for them and God had held back 
the greater doom. Then God had sent a 
summer of such great heat that it seemed as 
if the very earth would be burned; but again he, 
the prophet, had prayed for them, and God had still 
withheld the final overthrow. But now he saw God 
standing with the plumb-line, testing Israel's build- 
ing, and, finding it all out of truth, pronouncing 
doom even upon the royal family. " I will not pass 
by them any more. The high places of Isaac shall be 

l For what follows see Amos vii. 
58 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid 
waste ; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam 
with the sword." 

The Priest Intervenes. — Thus Amos prophesied. 
But at this point there was an interruption. The 
priests of the temple had so far kept quiet, awed 
by the striking earnestness of the prophet, yet re- 
sentful of his interference and his attacks upon their 
services and sanctuary. They waited, too, as their 
kind waited around Jesus in later times, hoping he 
would say something for which they could get him 
imprisoned. When at last he mentioned the king's 
name and prophesied evil of the reigning house, they 
thought their opportunity had come. Amaziah, the 
chief priest of the Bethel sanctuary, sent to the king, 
who was probably staying in the city at the time, 
telling him what Amos had said, and craftily ex- 
aggerating his words so as to make the king more 
angry with the prophet. Then Amaziah hurried 
forward into the temple, stepped up beside Amos, 
and with words of abuse ordered him out of the 
building, using language intended to make the people 
think that Amos was only a professional prophet, 
making money by preaching, and threatening him 
with punishment from the rulers for interfering at 
the king's sanctuary. 

This is a scene to be remembered. We picture 

59 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the royal temple splendidly ornamented and fur- 
nished, with the metal bull set up by Jeroboam as 
an image of Jehovah, and with the Asherah * and 
other emblems copied from Canaanitish idol-worship 
standing beside the altar. We see the vast audi- 
ence, swayed by the emotions kindled by the search- 
ing message of the prophet, and excited almost be- 
yond control now that the priest had interfered, 
ready to tear to pieces either Amos or Amaziah, 
whichever should arouse their animosity the most. 
We watch in the sombre half-light the two men 
facing each other on the steps of the altar. We note 
also how Amaziah, with sneers at Amos as a crust- 
hunter and mere outsider, and with references to the 
splendour of the sanctuary and the royal favour it 
enjoys, is cunningly turning the feeling of the crowd 
against the prophet. 

The Doom of Amaziah. — What will Amos do? 
Will he submit or will he try to turn the crowd to 
his side? He does neither: for above the people 
and the priest he sees the Lord standing over the 
altar, with his avenging arm stretched out over 
Amaziah, condemning in this man the spirit which 
has dragged Israel into sin. Thrilled by this awful 
vision, Amos speaks again : "I was no prophet, 

l The Asherah was a sacred tree or pole set up near an altar for 
some symbolic purpose. It was probably a survival of tree-worship, 
but some think it was an emblem of a Canaanitish goddess. 
60 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

neither was I a prophet's son; but the Lord took 
me from following the flock and said, Go, prophesy 
unto my people Israel. Now therefore, Amaziah, 
hear thou the word of the Lord : thy wife shall be 
cast out in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters 
shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided 
by line; and thou thyself shalt die in a land that 
is unclean, and Israel shall surely be led away 
captive out of his land." Such was the awful answer 
which Amos gave to the man who thought to frighten 
him with threats, an answer which, with all its 
terror, simply embodies what was in those ages the 
usual consequences of defeat in war. Then Amos 
turned, and with these terrible words ringing in the 
ears of priest and people he moved out of the temple, 
silenced yet conquering. 

Insistence on Morality. — We have lingered over 
this scene because it brings out so well the real 
character of Hebrew prophecy. Elijah showed us 
the prophet's task, but Amos shows us, even better 
than Elijah, how that task was generally attempted 
and what it involved. Here, as in the earlier case, 
we have the condemnation of the rulers, the attack 
on faithless priests, and the rebuke of the sinful 
nation. But in Amos there rings out sharp and 
clear that demand for righteousness, sincerity, and 
earnestness of life, that insistence upon morality, 

61 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

which is somewhat hidden in the story of Elijah, 
but which is the special characteristic of Hebrew 
prophecy. 

THE NATURE OF PROPHECY 
Foretelling Secondary. — A very common error 
about the prophets is to suppose that their chief 
business was to foretell events. Amos shows us at 
once that this is wrong, and that we must put this 
notion right out of our minds if we are to under- 
stand their great work. It is true that Amos foretold 
the coming destruction of Israel ; but that was only 
the punishment he saw would overtake the nation 
unless they repented and reformed. His real aim was 
to secure that reformation. There is nothing in the 
book of Amos about the coming of Jesus Christ, or 
about the Kingdom of God, or about the end of the 
world; and these are the subjects we expect men to 
talk about who deal with the future. If to foretell 
Christ had been the main business of a prophet we 
should have to say that Amos was not one, neither 
was Jeremiah, nor Ezekiel, nor Hosea, nor any of the 
older ones such as Elisha or Samuel, for the chief 
interest of all these was with their own times. So let 
us put the notion of foretelling in at least a secondary 
place, and understand that if it come into a prophet's 
work at all it is not to be regarded as his main purpose. 
62 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

Preachers of Righteousness. — How, then, are we 
to think of the prophets ? We must think of them 
as preachers of righteousness to the people of their 
own times. They opposed heathen religions in the 
interests of the national faith; they also opposed 
false forms of the national religion, and tried to show 
the true character of God and the kind of life and 
worship He required. In Amos we have a great ex- 
ample of this. When, in the name of Jehovah, the 
prophet said : " I hate, I despise your feasts," he 
was helping to destroy the false belief that as long 
as they offered certain sacrifices they could do any- 
thing they liked. Similarly, when he declared that 
God was about to overthrow the nation, he was 
pulling to pieces the false idea that Jehovah could 
not do without them . For they thought themselves the 
only people that belonged to their God, and that for 
His own sake He was bound to save them from their 
enemies : whereas Amos knew that God ruled all the 
nations, and would not save them from anything unless 
they repented of their sins. Thus we see the prophet 
as a preacher of righteousness, revealing a truer 
knowledge of God, and demanding from the nation a 
life more worthy of the God they professed to serve. 

The World they knew. — In the next place we see 
that the prophet's work was limited by the ideas of 
his age. He had to teach men whose clothes, food, 

63 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

streets, shops, games, tools, hours of labour, lan- 
guage, weights, measures, and nearly all the things 
they used, were utterly different from ours. Con- 
sequently they thought differently about things, 
and since they could not possibly have understood 
some things which are perfectly plain to us, they 
had to be taught accordingly. They had no news- 
papers or railways. Their education was exceed- 
ingly meagre. They knew nothing of Europe, 
America, Australia, the Chinese Empire, and the 
greater part of Africa; they thought that the world 
was a big island in a vast ocean, and that the sun 
went round the earth instead of the earth going 
round the sun. Politically they were a small people, 
and although prosperous in Amos's day, they often 
suffered great privations and cruel tyranny from 
stronger foes. Of settled government like ours they 
knew nothing. If the king happened to be a good 
man, he saw that something like justice was done; 
generally, however, he was too selfish or too busy 
to bother about it, and the weakest went to the 
wall. The low character of their religion we have 
already seen. All these facts, then, and many 
others like them, made their thoughts and ways, 
their whole life, strangely unlike ours. 

The Prophets were limited. — Now the prophets 
were in the same position as their fellows, differing 
64 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

from the rest only in being better men, in seeing 
more clearly what God was like and what He re- 
quired of His children. But much that is plain to 
us was beyond the comprehension even of great 
prophets. When God called them to their life task 
He held up before them, as He is ever holding up 
to men, the perfect truth, but the prophets could 
see it only in the light of the ideas in which they 
had been trained, and missed much of its splendid 
meaning. We shall often misunderstand the pro- 
phets unless we remember this limiting power of the 
ideas of their times. When, for example, they 
attacked rulers and kings, they were dealing with 
the men responsible for the misgovernment of the 
country, and never dreamt of a land where nearly 
every man would have a vote and help to rule. 
Nowadays those attacks would have to be made 
largely on the electors. And when Amos spoke in 
the name of Jehovah, he was not thinking of God 
as we think of our Heavenly Father, but according 
to the ideas he had learned from his youth, en- 
larged by what he had grasped of the revelation 
God had made to him. 

Revelation a Gradual Growth. — Further, it is be- 
cause of this limiting influence of the ideas of the 
time that the knowledge of God grew only gradu- 
ally. Most of the prophets advanced a little on 
e 65 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

their predecessors, and each truth realized became 
a step from which something more could be seen. 
Amos did not see that God was a God of love; but 
Hosea, who came soon after, saw it. 1 Amos thought 
that God dealt with men as nations rather than as 
individuals, but Jeremiah saw the importance of 
the individual in God's sight, and Ezekiel made it 
plain that every man will be judged according to 
his own works. Thus the prophets laboured, as 
every man must, each under the limitations of his 
own age; fighting bravely their heroic battles amid 
the semi-darkness of those early times. And their 
greatness comes out in this : not that they knew 
all about God, but that they knew so much more 
than those about them, and dared to preach it in 
the teeth of misunderstanding, hatred, and cruel 
persecution; so that the Israelites were gradually 
uplifted by their ministry; and the whole world 
enriched with a fuller revelation of God. 

Temporary and Timeless, — A third point to notice 
about the prophets follows from the former two, 
namely, that their message in part applied to their 
own time only, and in part to all times. Amos said 
that the plague of locusts and the drought were 
punishments for the sins of the nation; but this 
applies only to that particular plague and drought, 

1 See the whole prophecy, but especially chap. xi. 
66 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

and we should be wrong if we supposed, because 
of what Amos said, that every plague is a punish- 
ment. Such things may be sent to test and streng- 
then us. Again, Amos denounced the worship and 
sacrifices at Bethel; but this does not mean that 
worship and sacrifice are wrong, but only that they 
lose all value unless followed by righteous lives. On 
the other hand, when he denounced oppression, 
bribery, greed, and luxury, and showed that God 
hated and will punish these things, he was teaching 
something which is full of meaning and as greatly 
needed to-day as when he uttered it. Thus there are 
things in the prophets and other parts of the Bible 
which belong to the past, as well as the messages 
for ourselves, and the only way to distinguish them 
clearly is to love Christ and learn of Him. Our 
Lord was the fulfilment of prophecy, and there- 
fore He is the test of what is passing and what is 
permanent in the prophetic message. 

PROPHETIC WRITINGS 
Amos writes his Book. — When Amos left the 
temple at Bethel, with its awestruck multitude and 
doomed priest, his opportunity for free speech was 
over. Henceforward he was a marked man and the 
temple gates were closed to him. But he had given 

67 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

his message to the nation in a way that could not 
be overlooked; and if he could no longer preach, 
there were other ways of pressing home the truth 
that burned in his heart. Like many another per- 
secuted teacher since, Amos, when his voice was 
silenced, took up the pen. He returned to his home 
in Tekoa, twelve miles south of Jerusalem, and wrote 
a book. In this he put down the substance of what 
he had proclaimed in Israel, together with some 
thoughts from God concerning the surrounding 
nations. Among the books of our Bible there are 
quite a number of this kind, telling us some of the 
works and words of an inspired man; and among 
all these the book of Amos is the oldest. Amos was 
the first prophet to give us a book. 

Now a book is a wonderful thing. Amos was a 
voice crying in the wilderness ; but a voice, however 
strong, carries only a short way. Others may try 
to repeat what is said, but memories are weak, and 
mistakes soon creep in and spoil the message. A 
book, however, multiplies the voice, and carries it 
wherever its pages may travel. It lacks something 
of the thrill of the spoken word, but it is not so 
liable to error. It does not forget. And a book 
may be multiplied into many thousands of copies, 
and spread over many lands, and wherever it goes 
it carries the message of him whose words it bears. 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

Further, a book makes the message permanent. 
Even if you could hear the man yourself, you could 
not remember all he said ; but with a book the word 
is before you, and can be read again and again. 
The writer himself may die; centuries may come 
and go; but still in his book the message lives 
on, speaking to other times and people. If, as with 
Amos, he is a true prophet who suffered persecu- 
tion, the time comes when men see that he is right, 
and honour him for his work. Thus through a 
book a man may conquer, whose spoken word was 
rejected. The pen is mightier than the sword, 
and when Amos penned his prophecies he put a 
new and mighty weapon into the hands of the 
prophets. 

Historical and Writing Prophets. — This new weapon 
others were not slow to use. Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and most of the later prophets, 
each gave us a book, written either by himself or by 
his followers. And because they have given us books 
we distinguish them from the older prophets, like 
Samuel, Nathan, Gad, Elijah, and Elisha, who are 
known to us only as they are described in the his- 
tories. The histories in which they appear — Joshua, 
Judges, Samuel, and Kings — are called ' historical 
prophets,' and the books written by prophets, as 
well as the prophets who wrote them, are known 

69 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

as the ' writing prophets.' This distinction is useful 
and should be remembered. 1 



OTHER EARLY WRITINGS 

Another interesting fact comes into view as we 
think of Amos writing his book. In order to do such 
a thing he must have been able to write, unless he 
employed some one to do the writing for him. In 
either case it shows that writing, and therefore read- 
ing, were not unusual things in his day. What 
books had they then, and what did the books con- 
tain? We know very little about it, but there are 
a few we can be sure of. There is one called The 
Book of the Wars of the Lord, 2 which may have 
been in existence quite a long time, and seems to 
have contained all sorts of stories of ancient fights. 
Another was The Book of Jashar, 3 which may have 
been a collection of songs. Both these are men- 
tioned as books used by the writers of the historical 
narratives in the Old Testament, and must be 
counted among the sources of their information. 

The Primitive Document. — More important to us, 
however, is the fact that parts of some of the Old 
Testament books themselves were already in exist- 

1 Compare their position in the Hebrew Canon, page 109. 



2 See Numbers xxi. 14. 

3 See Joshua x. 13 and 2 Samuel i. 18. 



70 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

ence. More than a hundred years before Amos, 
some one, we know not who, had collected together 
all the stories he could find about the origin and 
ancient life of the Israelitish nation, and had written 
them in a book. This man from the beginning 
nearly always used for God the national name 
Jehovah; we therefore call his book "the Jehovist 
Narrative " and Biblical scholars refer to it as J. 
A little later a similar collection of narratives was 
made by a man in another part of the country, who, 
up to the point in Exodus at which the Divine Name 
was revealed to Moses, 1 generally used for God the 
name Elohim. This writing is, therefore, called 
66 the Elohist Narrative " and is referred to by 
scholars as E. It is probable that the former was 
written in the southern kingdom, and the latter in 
the northern; consequently the letters J and E are 
now frequently used as suggesting a Judean or 
Ephraimite origin. There are other differences be- 
tween J and E, besides the use of names for God, 
but this is the most striking. Further, E did not 
contain all the same stories as J, and where the 
stories are the same it often gives different numbers 
and other details. At a later period, after the time 
of Amos, some one who possessed a copy of both, 
finding that the same story was so often told in each, 

1 Exodus iii. 13-15. 

71 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

thought it would be better to have one complete 
account, and therefore he put the two together into 
one narrative containing all the stories. Where the 
two differed in detail he did not know which was 
correct, and, like a sensible man, put down both. 1 
This combination narrative we shall call the " Primi- 
tive Document " : it is referred to by scholars as 
JE. It contained most of the best stories in the 
early books of the Bible : for example, the stories 
of Joseph. A book made in this way, by weaving 
together separate accounts, is called a composite 
work. There are many examples of compositeness 
in our Bible. 

Not yet a Bible. — These books, then, in their early 
separate form, were in existence in the time of Amos, 
and one of them, if not both, was probably well 
known to him. But they were comparatively short, 
and nobody looked upon them as a Bible or sacred 
book. To us they are important because later they 
were taken up into the Bible, where they have be- 
come exceedingly precious. Doubtless there were 
also many other books in existence, such as the 
records kept at the royal court, and collections of 
laws and customs kept by priests and others. But 
enough has now been said to show that writing had 
already become a power, when in the middle of the 

i Compare in Gen. xxii. verses 7-8 with 13-20. 
72 



WRITINGS AND THE WRITING PROPHETS 

eighth century B.C. our brave Amos determined to 
make use of it in place of the voice that had been 
officially silenced. 

Fulfilment of Amos's Prediction. — It was some- 
where between 760 and 750 B.C. when Amos was 
driven from Bethel. Thirty years later his warn- 
ings received a terrible fulfilment. In 725 the 
northern kingdom was overrun and Samaria be- 
sieged by the Assyrians. The capital held out for 
three years, but in 722 it was taken. 1 The best of 
the people were transported to eastern countries. 
Their lands were given or sold to foreigners, who 
came in from Babylonia and Assyria to take their 
place. Hundreds were slain. All were robbed and 
impoverished. Northern Israel ceased to be a 
Hebrew land, and the ten tribes became wanderers, 
soon to be lost amid the millions of the nations to 
which they were driven. Prophets can be silenced, 
but that does not avert the disasters they foresee. 
The priests drove Amos from the temple, but their 
triumph was dearly bought. They could not stay 
the approaching doom, nor prevent the fulfilment 
of those awful words to Amaziah : " Thy land shall 
be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt die in 
a land that is unclean." 

1 See 2 Kings xvii. 5-6 and xviii. 9-22. 



73 



CHAPTER IV 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

1. The Story of the Discovery 

Renewal of the Covenant after the Discovery 
Josiah's Reforms 

2. The Book that was Discovered 

Its Identity 

Its Origin— The Prophets of the 8th Century B.C.— Their 

Followers — Manasseh's Persecution — The Book Written 

by the Persecuted — and Hidden 

3. Chief Results of the Discovery 

The Suppression of the High Places 
The Prophetic Interpretation of History 
The Beginning of the Idea of the Bible 
The Faith Independent of Priest and Land 

RAVAGES of the Scythians.— The mighty 
empire of the Romans was broken to pieces 
..in the fifth century of our era, not by the 
attack of organized armies, but by the inroads of 
hordes of Huns and Goths. In a similar manner, 
in the latter part of the seventh century B.C., the 
vast empire of Assyria was shaken by the onslaught 
of great bands of savage Scythians. They came from 
the lands about the Caspian Sea and overran the 
greater part of Western Asia. They pillaged and 
74 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

plundered the cities on the river Euphrates, and 
then came westward into Palestine. Strange to say 
they left the little kingdom of Judah untouched, 
but the Philistine cities on the coast were plundered, 
and the wild invaders pressed on to the very borders 
of Egypt. 

Temple Restoration. — To the dwellers in Judah it 
was a time of terror and dismay. As the stories of 
rapine and murder reached their ears they felt the 
cloud of death hanging over them. In their midst 
were prophets, like Jeremiah and Zephaniah, both 
of whom belong to this time, who pointed to those 
terrible and savage raiders as a visitation from God 
on account of their sins. The people heard their 
message, knew in their hearts that they deserved 
the punishment, and trembled all the more. For the 
inhabitants of Judah had indulged in well-nigh 
every evil, and had even endeavoured with fire and 
sword to stamp out every remnant of pure faith in 
God that still lingered in the land. The blood of 
many martyrs cried aloud for vengeance. It is not to 
be wondered at, therefore, that when the Scythians 
raged round their borders their guilty conscience 
doubled their alarm. They felt that judgment had 
come. In this distress they turned from their idols 
to Jehovah; and when the destroying flood passed 
by, leaving them unmolested, they thought that 

75 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

God had indeed heard their prayer. With a sudden 
burst of gratitude filling their hearts they looked 
around for some means of expressing their thank- 
fulness, and the eyes of many rested on the temple 
at Jerusalem. For a long time this temple had been 
but little used or, worse still, had been desecrated 
by being employed for the worship of heathen idols. 
It had suffered much from neglect and spoliation. 
What could be more fitting, therefore, than that 
they should, as a thank-offering for their deliver- 
ance, restore the House of God to its former splend- 
our? Thus it came to pass in the eighteenth year 
of the reign of King Josiah, about 621 B.C., that 
the neglected temple became once more an object 
of veneration, and money was contributed from all 
quarters to pay for its thorough repair. 

Finding of the Book. — The workmen had been but 
a short time occupied with this task when one of 
those little things happened which sometimes un- 
expectedly turn the tide of history : they discovered 
in the temple a book. Perhaps it was in a cup- 
board which for a long time had not been opened. 
Perhaps it was in some out-of-the-way corner where 
it had been purposely hidden. Wherever it was, it 
came to light during the renovations. When ex- 
amined by Hilkiah the priest it proved to be 
a book of the law. Hilkiah handed this book to 
76 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

Shaphan, an official of the court, who was so 
impressed with it that he felt it to be his duty to 
inform the king. So Shaphan took the book and 
read it to King Josiah, " and when the king heard 
the words of the book of the law, he rent his 
clothes." 1 

But the king could not leave the matter with a 
mere show of deep conern. The book contained 
things which haunted him. He realized that if its 
threats were carried out both he and his people would 
be utterly destroyed. He therefore sent Shaphan, 
Hilkiah, and some other officers, to inquire of the 
Lord what they were to do ; for, said he, " great is 
the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, 
because our fathers have not hearkened unto the 
words of this book, to do according unto all that is 
written concerning us." Then the officers came with 
their question to a prophetess, dwelling in Jeru- 
salem, named Huldah; and her answer was that all 
the words of the book should be fulfilled. The 
children of Israel had forsaken Jehovah, had burned 
incense to other gods, and sinned so grievously that 
their punishment could not be averted. But, inas- 
much as Josiah had repented, the evil should not 
fall in his day : he should die in peace. " And they 
brought the king word again." 

1 2 Kings xxii. 11. 

77 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Covenant Renewed. — Now King Josiah was a 
good man, and it grieved him terribly to think that 
his kingdom must shortly suffer destruction. He 
therefore decided to do all that a king could to make 
Judah a better land, and to fulfil the newly dis- 
covered law. He called all the leading men of the 
nation to Jerusalem, and there, with all the people 
of the capital, all the priests and prophets, they 
held a solemn service in the temple. To this great 
gathering the king read " all the words of the book 
of the covenant which was found in the house of 
the Lord." When he had read it he stood on a 
platform before all the people, and promised for 
himself and the whole nation, " to walk after the 
Lord, and to keep His commandments, and His 
testimonies, and His statutes, with all his heart and 
with all his soul, to confirm the words of the cove- 
nant that were written in this book." Then the 
people joined in. They took the king's promise and 
made it their own. They " stood to the covenant." 

Josiah's Reforms. — Having thus solemnly pledged 
the nation, Josiah actively set about the work of 
reform. All the vessels in the temple which had been 
made for the worship of Baal, of the Asherah, and 
the stars, were burned outside the city, and the 
ashes carried all the way to Bethel. He put an end 
to the work of the priests at all the high places 
78 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

throughout the land and denied or destroyed their 
shrines. These high places were the usual centres 
of worship for the Israelites down to this time. 
They were generally situated on the outskirts of a 
city, were accepted as satisfactory in early times, 
and were supported by Samuel, Solomon, and others. 
Most of them had been shrines of the Canaanites 
before the Hebrews possessed the land. In addition 
to the altar, the symbolic pillar and the asherah 
were allowed to remain, and these symbols of the 
old corrupt Baal-worship naturally helped to bring 
the customs of the Canaanitish idolatry into the 
worship of Jehovah. It was because of this corrupt 
tendency that the high places were denounced by 
the prophets from Amos onward and finally abo- 
lished. Josiah also had the images in the temple 
burnt to powder and the dust scattered in the 
cemetery. He stopped the worship of Molech 1 with 
its cruel practice of making a child pass through 
the fire. He took away the horses and burned the 
chariots of the Sun, and destroyed the altars on the 
roof of the palace, which had been used for the 
worship of that and other heavenly bodies. He 

l Molech was a deity widely worshipped among the non- 
Israelitish peoples of Palestine and kindred races, frequently also 
by the Israelites themselves, especially in the later days of the 
monarchy. The most prominent feature of this cult was the cruel 
custom of sacrificing children as burnt offerings, and for this 
reason it was especially condemned. 

79 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

also put away all those who had familiar spirits, 
and the wizards, and the teraphim. 1 In these and 
other ways Josiah tried to get rid of every sign and 
symbol of heathen religion, to make the worship 
of Jehovah the one religion of the land, and to 
centralize that worship in the one great temple at 
Jerusalem. The work was crowned by an impres- 
sive celebration of the Passover, concerning which 
the writer of Kings says : " Surely there was not 
kept such a passover from the days of the Judges 
that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings 
of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah." Amid the 
rejoicings of that great feast it seemed as if Israel 
had at last returned unto the Lord. But the pull- 
ing down of idols is one thing; the turning of the 
people in love and obedience to God is another. 
The words of Jeremiah and Ezekiel show that 
Josiah 's reforms did not greatly improve the nation. 
Judah was too deeply sunk in vice to be purified 
by any external changes, however extensive and well 
meant. 

1 The teraphim were household deities which probably repre- 
sented the ancestors of the home. They were supposed to act as 
an oracle and give guidance. Naturally, therefore, their use is 
constantly coupled, in Scripture, with the practice of magic and 
soothsaying. See Gen. xxxi. 19 and 30, 1 Sam. xix. 18. 



80 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

THE BOOK THAT WAS DISCOVERED 

Its Identity. — Let us now turn to two questions 
of the deepest interest, namely : what was the book 
which created all this stir, and how did it come to 
be hidden in the temple ? As to what the book was, 
there can be little doubt. It was short enough to 
be read through at a meeting. It denounced very 
strongly the neglect of the covenant with Jehovah. 
It demanded the suppression of all heathen worship, 
and especially the worship of the * host of heaven.' 
It required the concentration of worship at the 
Temple at Jerusalem, and the putting down of all 
the high places. It prohibited the practices of 
wizards and diviners. Finally, it called for the 
celebration of the Feast of the Passover. There is 
only one book in the Bible which fits into all these 
facts : it is the book of Deuteronomy ; and we shall 
be safe in regarding the original book of Deutero- 
nomy 1 as the book which was found in the House 
of the Lord by Hilkiah the priest. 

Eighth-Century Prophets. — The answer to the 
second question — how did the book come to be hidden 
in the temple ? — is to be found in a great story of 
prophecy and persecution. We studied in our last 

l It has since been lengthened by the addition of eleven 
chapters, viz. chaps, i.-iv., xxvii., and xxix.-xxxiv. 

F 81 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

chapter the work of Amos in the northern kingdom, 
and saw how he became the first of the writing 
prophets. Soon after him there arose in northern 
Israel another, and perhaps even greater prophet — 
Hosea — the man who was the first to make known 
the greatest of all truths, that Jehovah is a God 
of love. Before Hosea had finished his work in the 
north, Isaiah, the statesman-prophet whose courage 
kept Judah from failing in two great national 
struggles, was giving to Jerusalem a new vision of 
God. 1 Then, in 725 B.C., came the Assyrian invasion 
of the northern state, followed by the siege and 
destruction of Samaria, the capital, and the carry- 
ing off of ten tribes into the many places where they 
became scattered and lost. The shock of this fearful 
disaster was felt throughout Judah, and Isaiah used it 
as the ground of further appeals to his countrymen. 
About this time Micah 2 appeared, and added his 
influence to the cause of righteousness. 

Manasseh's Persecution. — Such mighty men, in- 
spired of God, and fighting for the right with un- 
exampled courage, could not fail to move many 
hearts. Most of the people were sunk in vice, yet 
numbers responded to the prophetic preaching and 
turned in penitence to God. In this way Isaiah was 

1 For typical passages read Isa. i., vi., xxviii., xxx., xxxiii. 

2 Read especially Mic. iii., vi. 

8% 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

able to speak of " my disciples," and a very noble, 
though by no means large, revival took place. But 
King Hezekiah, whose influence had been a great 
help to Isaiah, died in 695 B.C., and was succeeded 
by one of the worst kings that Judah ever had, his 
son Manasseh. The latter came to the throne at 
twelve years of age and reigned fifty-five years ; and 
from the time he became old enough to think and 
act for himself, he lived a dissolute life, mocked the 
reformers, encouraged every form of idolatry and 
corrupt religion, and finally tried to exterminate the 
religion of Jehovah by a cruel persecution of its ad- 
herents. Had Isaiah lived, his great influence might 
have held Manasseh in check, but he was an old man 
and must have died when Manasseh was still a youth. 
No other personality of sufficient strength arose to 
restrain him, and he plunged the nation deeper and 
deeper into sin. Nor was the king alone to blame. 
Hezekiah had made a vigorous attempt to put down 
the high places in the country, which were notorious 
for their wickedness, and to make religion purer by 
centralizing the worship in Jerusalem. 1 But this 
angered a great many of the people, and as soon as 
the tide of authority turned under Manasseh's vicious 
rule they eagerly took advantage of it, rejoicing in 
the downfall of the religion of Jehovah, restoring the 

1 See 2 Kings xviii. 4 and 22. 

88 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

high places of the idols, and spreading a popular 
reaction against the teaching of the prophets, which 
quickly developed into a persecution of their fol- 
lowers. Jerusalem was filled with the blood of 
innocent men. Martyrs suffered for their faith. 
The best men of Judah were destroyed by their own 
people. As Jeremiah put it : " Your own sword 
hath devoured your prophets like a destroying lion." 
The Book Written. — When martyrs are multiplied, 
true religion is driven underground; but it is not 
destroyed. The followers of the prophets, like the 
Covenanters of a later age, met in secret places; 
and being no longer allowed to preach their con- 
victions, they began to write them. Before this, 
Amos, when silenced by corrupt officials, had taken 
up the pen. Now these poor persecuted people, 
with love for Jehovah burning in their hearts, and 
the teachings of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah 
kindling their minds, began a work for God which 
shall not cease to bring forth fruit as long as Chris- 
tianity lives in the earth. Moses had committed the 
law to the priests, 1 and throughout the intervening 
centuries the people had known but little of it. 
These followers of the prophets, however, knew it, 
and determined to give it to the people, that it might 
counteract, to some extent, the influence of their 

i See Deut. xxxi. 9, 26. 
84 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

idolatrous priests. But they did not write a bare 
list of the laws. They set forth the laws of Moses 
in the earnest and moving language of their pro- 
phetic leaders, pointed them with appeals to God's 
love and deliverances, backed them with terrible 
warnings of the consequences that would follow 
neglect, and applied them to the sins of their own 
time. We have called these men followers of the 
prophets, but in reality they were prophets them- 
selves, prophets who, being unable to speak, uttered 
their message by setting the evils and needs of the 
hour in the light of the Mosaic law. 

Hidden and Found. — But when their book was 
written, what could they do with it? If their 
enemies found it the writing would be destroyed, 
and Israel would be no better for their efforts. If 
it were found in their possession they themselves 
would be destroyed as well. So they adopted the 
plan (perhaps God guided them to it in answer to 
prayer) of hiding it in the temple, hoping that sooner 
or later it would be discovered and allowed to speak 
its message. For twenty, thirty, it may have been 
sixty years, for we cannot determine exactly when 
it was written, it lay in that secret place. Then the 
hope of its writers was fulfilled : the book was found. 
A new and better king listened to its solemn and 
earnest words. Its prophetic appeal succeeded where 

85 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the power of great kings had failed. Its teaching 
formed the basis of a great reform. The holy cove- 
nant was renewed. The book became the law of 
a nation. 



CHIEF RESULTS OF THE DISCOVERY 
Suppression of the High Places. — From the dis- 
covery of this book there flowed three far-reaching 
results. First, we have the immediate suppression 
of the high places, and the centralization of worship 
in the temple at Jerusalem. Solomon had sought 
something of this kind. Hezekiah had tried to en- 
force it. But what these had failed to do Josiah 
accomplished, not because he was Josiah, but be- 
cause he was backed by the book of Deuteronomy. 
Statesmen desired this centralization, because it was 
the only way in which the nation could be really 
united; and they must have desired it all the more 
in the days of Isaiah, when they saw the ten tribes 
of the north swept away into captivity. But the 
rulers had never been able to get rid of the high 
places, because they had too firm a hold on the 
affections of the people. For ages the priest and 
the local shrine had been woven into their lives. 
The people did not know the law, but the priest 
did ; and they turned to him to settle every dispute. 
86 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

These local high places and their priests were deeply 
influenced by idolatry. They were the successors 
of the old Canaanitish Baal-worship, and often utterly 
corrupt. Yet they represented the religious life and 
associations of the surrounding population, which 
clung to them tenaciously. When, however, these 
people were confronted with Deuteronomy the case 
was different. It spoke in the name of the very 
Moses to whom the priest appealed, and showed the 
priest to be in the wrong. Its laws were largely old 
and familiar, though many had been forgotten or 
ignored, but in this book they lived in the very spirit 
of Moses. The moral passion and vehemence of that 
great leader burst out afresh in the zeal of these 
disciples of the prophets, and swept away every 
barrier. Within a year the high places were trodden 
down, and the people in all parts of the country 
were learning to look for light and inspiration to 
the holy city. But, alas, the men who might have 
been the backbone of this movement had been 
martyred; it depended on the king, who did his 
best, but was not able to transform the daily life of 
the nation. 

Prophetic View of History. — The second import- 
ant result of the discovery is the influence the book 
of Deuteronomy exerted over the writings of the 
period immediately following. This influence is so 

87 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

deep that any scholar versed in the art of distin- 
guishing the styles of authors could pick out the 
Old Testament books written under its influence 
simply by the likeness of their language. Although 
concerned chiefly with laws, there is nothing formal 
or legal in its wording. It deals with them in the 
smooth, full, eloquent utterance and impassioned 
manner of a great orator. This style, easily distin- 
guished in the writers who caught its note, is well 
illustrated in the book of Joshua. The influence 
of Deuteronomy on literature, however, was not 
wholly a matter of words and phrases. Still more 
powerfully were men affected by its point of view. 
It taught them to judge the present in the light of 
the past. It looked at the nation's history as the 
working out of God's will, especially of His will as 
expressed in their national covenant with Jehovah. 
The prosperity that had come to them was the re- 
ward of faithfulness : their distresses were punish- 
ments for forsaking God. Everything in the his- 
torical books of Kings, and we may add Joshua, 
Judges, and Samuel, is looked at in this way. They 
give us the prophetic interpretation of history, and 
that prophetic standpoint, found in so many of the 
books written just before and during the Exile, marks 
the influence of Deuteronomy. 

The Idea of the Bible. — Lastly, we have what was 
88 



1 

THE DISCOVERY OF THE BOOK 

destined to be the greatest of all the results due to 
this discovery, the beginning of the idea of the Bible, 
that is, of a book which is a standard of duty be- 
cause of its having divine authority. Now that 
sense of authority in the Bible began with this dis- 
covery. Never before, in the attempts to reform 
Israel, had appeal been made to the authority of 
a book. Samuel did not appeal to one, neither did 
Nathan when he reproved David, nor Solomon when 
he consecrated the temple, nor Elijah when he de- 
nounced the sins of the house of Ahab. Even when 
Hezekiah attempted to destroy the high places, so 
far as we know he made no use of the statements 
of a writing. The great prophets, whose work was 
completed before this discovery was made — Amos, 
Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah — similarly made no appeal 
to a Bible. With God's commandments and laws 
they were fairly familiar, but not with a book of the 
law generally known and recognized as possessing 
authority. When, however, Deuteronomy appeared, 
the new attitude was at once adopted. The mess- 
age of a prophet was freely criticised by those to 
whom he spoke, because he was not recognized as 
Jehovah's spokesman. But Moses was so recognized ; 
and here was a book that challenged them in the 
name and spirit of Moses, that confronted them with 
the curse of a broken covenant, that brought history 

89 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

to witness against their sins, that demanded heart- 
felt penitence and stern reform. They found them- 
selves, in this book, standing at the bar of Jehovah 
and in the presence of an unchanging Judge. 

The Faith made Independent. — Thus a new light, 
the lamp of God's word, shone forth. It appeared 
at the right moment. Before the men who had seen 
that book brought out of the temple had passed 
away, the little kingdom of Judah was trampled 
in the dust by the armies of Babylonia. The poli- 
tical freedom of Judah came to an end. Jerusalem 
was razed to the ground, the Temple destroyed by 
fire, and the sacrifices on her altar ceased. It looked 
as if the Hebrew people, with their splendid vision 
of God and wretched disobedience, were swept away 
for ever. But before the destroying army trampled 
over the land, God prepared for the preservation 
of that which was best in Israel. He had so worked 
that they were no longer dependent on priest and 
temple, on land and king. Their faith and hope 
were now expressed in a writing, which they could 
carry to the ends of the earth. Judah had witnessed 
the birth of the Bible. 



90 



CHAPTER V 
THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

1. The Exile 

Babylon — Its Size and Magnificence 
Destruction of Jerusalem, 586 B.C. The Exiles 

2. Importance of the Exile to the Old Testament 

Ministry of Ezekiel. The Synagogue 

New Religious Patriotism and Hope of a Return 

Collection and Putting Together of Writings 

3. The Return, 537 b.c 

Its Prophet. The Return and Restored Sacrifices 
Temple Rebuilding — Haggai and Zechariah — completed 

516 B.C. 
Difficulties of Returned Exiles — Malachi 

4. The Book of the Law 

Ezra brings the completed Pentateuch, 458 B.C. 
Nehemiah Restores Jerusalem's Walls, 445 B.C. 
Ezra Publishes the Book of the Law, 444 B.C. 
The Jewish Canon and the Samaritan Pentateuch. 
Babylon and Jerusalem 

CLOSE to the river Euphrates, some fifty 
miles south of Bagdad, a group of hillocks 
breaks the general flatness of the country. 
The river here is fringed with date-palms, beyond 
which lie gardens, often marshy and fit only for rice- 
growing, and large patches of uncultivated desert. 

91 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The mounds reach to heights varying from twenty- 
five to seventy feet, and stretch from north to south 
over a distance of five miles. For centuries the wind 
has swept over them the sand of the desert; yet 
those mounds cover the remains of what was in many 
respects the most wonderful city the world has ever 
known : they show the site of buried Babylon. 

Great Babylon. — In the days of Nebuchadnezzar's 
power this great city was extended and beautified 
and strengthened. It stood on both banks of the 
Euphrates, by which it was divided into two almost 
equal parts. Two walls were built round it, enclos- 
ing a vast square. Each of the four walls was pierced 
by twenty-five gates, and roads ran right across the 
city from gate to gate, dividing it into squares like a 
huge draughtboard. These roads were fifteen miles 
long, so that the walls enclosed an area of two 
hundred and twenty-five square miles. The County 
of London covers an area of one hundred and seven- 
teen square miles, which is only just over one half 
the size of ancient Babylon. The city walls were 
not of stone, but artificial hills : immense ramparts 
three hundred feet high, and broad enough on the 
top for several chariots to drive abreast. Higher 
still rose the turrets of two hundred and fifty towers, 
which, standing at intervals along the walls, com- 
pleted the defences of this gigantic fortress. 
92 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

The magnificence of the buildings matched the 
strength of the fortifications. Chief among them 
was the temple of Bel, which rose in seven huge 
terraced storeys to the amazing height of six hundred 
feet, each storey being dedicated to one of the 
heavenly bodies and coloured accordingly : gold for 
the Sun, silver for the Moon, azure for Mercury, 
and so on. At the top stood the shrine of Nebo, 
one of the greatest of the Babylonian gods. Another 
feature of great splendour was the Palace Royal. 
It stood in spacious gardens, had many high towers 
and innumerable rooms, and was adorned with costly 
works of art. Still more notable were the * hanging 
gardens,' for which Babylon was famed throughout 
antiquity as one of the seven wonders of the world. 
These gardens were constructed and laid out in the 
most beautiful manner to produce the effects, pre- 
cious in a land so flat and uninteresting, of hill and 
dale, fountain and cascade, enriched with foliage 
and flowers. In addition to these special buildings, 
there were all the great works connected with the 
system of canals, tunnels, and lakes by which the 
city was watered and adorned, as well as all the 
three- or four-storied dwellings and commercial 
houses. Shall we wonder that the great emperor, 
who did most for the proper laying out of the city, 
should proudly boast of it : "Is not this great 

93 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Babylon, which I have built for the royal dwelling 
place, by the might of my power and for the glory 
of my majesty ? " x 

Destruction of Jerusalem. — It was this Nebuchad- 
nezzar who, in 597 B.C., twenty-four years after the 
discovery of the law book, overran Jerusalem, plun- 
dered the Temple, and carried away the flower of 
the population into Babylonia. Ten years later he 
came again, angry at a revolt of the city against 
his rule, and after being kept outside the walls for 
eighteen months inflicted a terrible vengeance. All 
the principal buildings, including the Temple, were 
sacked and burned; the walls were razed to the 
ground; the king's sons were put to death before 
their father's eyes, and he was then blinded and 
sent in fetters to Babylon, where he died in prison; 
the chief officers and leading men also were executed ; 
the vessels of the sanctuary were taken and added 
to the fabulous treasures stored in the temple of 
Bel; and every man and woman of the population 
that was worth taking was driven in woeful capti- 
vity over the seven hundred miles of road that 
separate Jerusalem from Babylon. 2 

Condition of the Exiles. — We must, however, 
beware of thinking of the Jews in Babylon as lan- 
guishing in chains and slavery. The earlier company 

1 Daniel iv. 30. 2 See 2 Kings xxiv. 10-xxv. 22. 

94 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

of exiles, including all the nobility, was settled in 
various parts of the country, and put to develop 
the land or engage in commerce, as they might find 
best for themselves. Many were taken into the 
army and other branches of the emperor's service. 
Doubtless the later captives were treated with far 
less consideration. Most of them were set to toil 
on the great engineering and building works in the 
capital and elsewhere, and any not required for 
those imperial undertakings were probably sold into 
a mild form of slavery. But on the whole they en- 
joyed considerable freedom. They were allowed to 
worship according to their own customs, as far as 
that was possible in a foreign land. They formed 
communities and appointed elders, very much as 
they had done in the towns of Judah. Prosperity 
in business came to many, and some, among whom 
were Daniel and Nehemiah, rose to positions of great 
responsibility and influence at the court. Their one 
restraint was that they were not permitted to leave 
the country : whatever liberties they enjoyed, and 
whatever prosperity they might attain, the fact re- 
mained that they were exiles. 

Although some of them soon ceased to trouble over 
this, yet the true and patriotic Jew could not repress 
the longing for his native land. He looked out over 
the plain, made rich in produce by the abundant 

95 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

canals, but monotonous and uninspiring, and his 
soul longed for the mountains of Israel. He walked 
beside the huge ramparts of Babylon and felt them 
to be prison walls. He gazed up at the lofty Temple 
of Bel with its gorgeous colours and exalted shrine, 
saw in it the symbol of the power that had devas- 
tated his home, and came to hate idolatry with a 
hatred that no prophet had been able to inspire. 
Putting ourselves in their places, we can readily under- 
stand why Ezekiel in two great chapters addresses 
his words to " the mountains of Israel," and speaks 
"to the mountains and to the hills, to the water- 
courses and to the valleys." We can appreciate, 
too, what made the great prophet, who saw deliver- 
ance coming, cry out, " Bel boweth down, Nebo 
stoopeth." And we can sympathize with that bitter 
cry of the exile from home, " By the rivers of 
Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when 
we remembered Zion." 1 



IMPORTANCE OF THE EXILE TO THE 
OLD TESTAMENT 

Ezekiel's Ministry. — Among those carried off by 
Nebuchadnezzar after his first attack on Jerusalem 
was Ezekiel the prophet. This man began his work 

l Ezekiel vi. and xxxvi. ; Isaiah xlvi. 1 ; Psalm cxxxvii. 
96 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

by endeavouring to correct the false hopes of a 
speedy return, held by many of the captives. This 
made him thoroughly disliked, but the utter de- 
struction of Jerusalem ten years later proved the 
truth of his message. From that time he was looked 
up to by the exiles as a prophet sent of God to 
sustain them in their trial. He acted as a pastor 
to the Jews living near him, and his inspired visions 
kept them from losing heart and prepared the 
nation for the future that was yet to be theirs. 
We can picture him gathering them together in his 
house or in some quiet place in the fields, and tell- 
ing them the visions that God had sent him; while 
they hung breathlessly upon his words, and the 
flames of a noble patriotism burned higher and yet 
higher in their hearts. 

Origin of Synagogue. — Such gatherings soon be- 
came a regular feature in the life of the exiles, and 
produced permanent results. They naturally found 
it helpful to meet in this way on the Sabbath, and 
what was at first an informal assembly gradually 
developed into a regular service for worship and the 
reading of the law book. In this way there grew 
up the institution of the Synagogue, which ever since 
has been a powerful instrument for keeping the 
scattered Jews faithful to their race and religion. 

Preparations for Return. — Nor was the Synagogue 
G 97 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the only lasting outcome of this fellowship of the 
exiles. Their gatherings stimulated their love for 
the old home and fed their faith in the God of their 
fathers. Jerusalem became in their eyes the Holy 
City, and the restoration of the Temple the great 
desire of their hearts. Along with this there de- 
veloped also an intense love for everything con- 
nected with their past history, and especially their 
religion ; and in the hope that some day the Jewish 
nation and worship would be re-established in their 
ancient home, they began to collect every record 
they could find, bearing upon these subjects, and to 
store them up for future use. In this hope they 
were encouraged by the words of Jeremiah, 1 who 
had proclaimed a limit of seventy years to the exile, 
and by Ezekiel's visions o£the new Israel that should 
rise out of the ashes of the old. Thus there spread 
through a large portion of the exiles an enthusiasm 
for the religion of Jehovah which the nation had 
never shown in its more prosperous days. Numbers 
gave their spare time and wealth to the task of keep- 
ing up the patriotic sentiment of the other exiles, 
and collecting every fragment from the past which 
had survived the hurricane of conquest. Prepara- 
tion for the return became the one thing to live for, 
and the spirit of many of them cannot be better 

l Chap. xxv. 12. 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

expressed than in the words of the one hundred and 
thirty-seventh Psalm : 

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, 

Let my right hand forget her cunning. 

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 

If I remember thee not ; 

If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. 

Work for the Bible. — As a result of all this zeal 
the Exile became, in relation to the Bible, the most 
important period of Hebrew history. It was sup- 
remely the time for the gathering together of records, 
and for fashioning them into connected accounts. 
The chronicles of kings, the doings and sayings of 
prophets, the traditions and laws of the priesthood, 
and the memories associated with pillars, ruins, 
wells, etc., were all lovingly set down in writing, 
or, if already in writing, carefully collected. Later 
on they were put together as continuous narratives, 
and copies were made, by hand of course, and cir- 
culated among those who were zealous for Israel 
and prosperous enough to afford them. The thor- 
ough collection and editing of the laws and other 
official records, as preserved from time immemorial 
in the families of the priests, was a very special part 
of this work; and as Ezekiel, the most influential 
figure in the early years of the Exile, was himself 
a priest, it is thought that he had something to do 

99 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

with the early stages in the preparation of this 
priestly record. The ' Priestly Document,' as it is 
called, referred to among Biblical students as P, 
was afterward combined with the Primitive Docu- 
ment spoken of in Chapter III. The Book of 
Deuteronomy, which had already been enlarged by 
the addition of the story of the conquest of Pales- 
tine under Joshua, was also added to this account, 
and the whole carefully linked up so as to make one 
great composite history of the Hebrews from Creation 
to the settlement in Canaan. Other histories, in- 
cluding Judges, Samuel, and Kings, were similarly 
treated. The writings left by prophets or their 
disciples were sought out, and any fragmentary 
writings which seemed to belong to one or another 
were added for the sake of completeness. Some of 
these bits, however, were put in the wrong place, 
so that in several of the prophetic books we have 
passages, and occasionally long sections, which do 
not really come from the prophet whose name the 
book bears. Religious poems also were collected, 
whether hymns which had been sung at services, 
or private prayers. Mention should likewise be made 
of the proverbs. Indeed, such was the feeling of 
some of these exiles that they treasured, more than 
precious jewels, anything whatever which had a con- 
nexion with their past national existence. Con- 
100 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW . 

science had been deeply stirred by disaster, and 
they believed that by these labours they were both 
showing a true penitence for past neglect, and pre- 
paring the way to a glorious future for their 
beloved Israel. 



THE RETURN, 537 B.C. 

The Second Isaiah. — Fifty years of exile had rolled 
slowly and sadly by, when a new voice spoke to 
Israel, and the breath of revived hope stirred the 
branches of the nation. In that half century most 
of those who came out from Jerusalem had passed 
away, and a new generation had taken their place. 
Ezekiel had ceased to prophesy twenty years before. 
Nebuchadnezzar, their conqueror, had died in 562, 
and had been followed by two descendants and a 
usurper, whose son, Belshazzar, became for all 
practical purposes the ruler in Babylon. Then a 
new conqueror arose, Cyrus, who overthrew the 
Medes, secured the throne of Persia, by a series of 
successful campaigns made himself master of western 
Asia, and finally took Babylon itself, putting Bel- 
shazzar to death. The marvellous career of this 
great soldier was closely watched by one of the 
exiled Jews, who saw in him the instrument of 
Jehovah for the deliverance of Israel. This exile, 

101 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the new voice already referred to and one of the 
greatest prophets that ever spoke to God's people, 
uttered his prophecies in the years between the ap- 
pearance of Cyrus as the conqueror of the Medes 
and his overthrow of the Babylonians. The pro- 
phet must have been a great man ; probably he held 
an official position in Babylon, and this may have 
been the reason why his name was not put to his 
prophecies, so that to this day we do not know 
who he was. We have his messages, however, in the 
latter part of Isaiah, commencing at chapter forty, 
for which reason he is conveniently called the Second 
Isaiah. He saw that God would use Cyrus to give 
freedom to his people. Every victory for Cyrus, 
therefore, meant the breaking of another of the 
cords that tied the exiles to their bondage, and 
brought nearer the doom of their captors. So the 
prophet sent the message of a near and sure deliver- 
ance thrilling throughout the exile band, " Comfort 
ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God." He heard 
a voice calling them to cross the desert to their 
native country and promising assistance, " Every 
valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and 
hill shall be made low." The embers of hope he 
fanned into a mighty flame with his challenging 
call, " Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O 
Zion." 
102 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

The Return. — These prophecies received a speedy 
fulfilment. Cyrus entered Babylon in October, 
538 B.C., and one of his first acts was to issue an 
edict giving permission to the Jews to return to 
Palestine, allowing them to carry back the sacred 
vessels belonging to the Temple, and commanding 
them to rebuild the ruined sanctuary at Jerusalem. 
Under this edict a multitude, stated by Ezra to 
number over forty thousand, set out the next year 
and reached Jerusalem safely under the leadership 
of Zerubbabel, a prince of the house of David, and 
Joshua a priest. For a few months they were busy 
restoring the ruined homes, but in the autumn they 
assembled, set up the great altar of burnt offering 
on its ancient site, and restored the sacrifices. 

Rebuilding of the Temple. Haggai and Zechariah. 
— The next year they laid the foundation stone for 
a new temple, but progress was prevented by 
the opposition of the Samaritans, a neighbouring 
people of mixed descent. The returned exiles re- 
garded them as unfit to assist in the work on the 
temple, because they were not of true Jewish birth ; 
and, not being allowed to help, they decided to 
hinder. This opposition and the difficulties of mak- 
ing a new start in life, together with a series of bad 
harvests, brought the work to a standstill. It was 
not until sixteen years had passed that the work 

103 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

of rebuilding the Temple was again taken in hand. 
At that time there had been a succession of bad 
seasons, and the colonists, surrounded by hostile 
tribes, were in a very unenviable position. But God 
raised up two more prophets — Haggai and Zecha- 
riah — whose earnest efforts roused the people to 
their task. They realized the importance of the 
Temple to a nation that had ceased to possess any 
political power or freedom. It was the outward 
sign of their faith, and their faith was the one bond 
holding them together. So Haggai urged that the 
poor crops were the penalty for their neglect of 
the sanctuary, and Zechariah stirred them with 
bright promises of blessing to come. Their combined 
endeavours had the desired effect. Appeal for per- 
mission was made to the Persian governor of the 
province, and by him to the reigning king, who 
readily consented when the original edict of Cyrus 
was found. The king also ordered the officials of 
the district to assist. Thus in 520 B.C. the work 
was recommenced, and completed by 516. Worship 
was restored. The priesthood was reorganized. The 
Temple on Mount Sion became once more the reli- 
gious centre of the Jews, and the goal to which with 
longing hearts, from all points of the compass, 
pilgrims pressed to the great festivals. 1 

l See the early chapters of Ezra and Haggai, and Zechariah i.-viii. 

104 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

Dark Days of Malachi. — Despite this Temple re- 
storation, however, things went badly with the 
6 children of the captivity,' as the returned exiles 
were called. We know nothing with certainty of 
events in Jerusalem during the next sixty years, 
but the hints we can glean suggest that they were 
years of religious indifference, of comparative 
poverty, and of grave social injustice. The hatred 
with which the Jews were regarded by other nations, 
and the dangers to which they might be exposed 
under a careless ruler, are reflected in the book of 
Esther. The low condition of the people of Jeru- 
salem itself is seen in the pages of the prophet 
Malachi, who lived there during this period. He 
complains of the popular neglect of the sanctuary, 
and the failure to pay their tithes for the mainten- 
ance of priest and sacrifice. He rebukes their lack 
of faith and their contamination by the heathen. 
He denounces also the priests for their slovenly con- 
duct of the Temple services, and for offering sacri- 
fices which were a disgrace to the altar. The whole 
picture is one to justify fully the anxiety for the 
Holy City felt by the faithful Jews still living in 
Babylonia, and the efforts which they then began 
to make for its improvement. 



105 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

Ezra's Mission. — First among these efforts was the 
mission of Ezra, who came to Jerusalem with a 
strong party in 458 B.C. He was well read in all 
the books which the exiles had got together, and 
especially in that great historical and legal account 
of the past, which had been woven out of many 
records as already described. With the later stages 
of this work Ezra probably had much to do : for 
the literary work of the Exile was not completed 
in the half century before the return, but was con- 
tinued by those who remained in Babylonia right 
down to the time of Ezra and even later ; and when 
Ezra set out for Jerusalem it was with the definite 
object of getting the Temple services reformed, so 
as to make them agree with the customs and laws, 
which the exiles had unearthed, and which were set 
out in this s Book of the Law.' When he got to 
Jerusalem, however, he found things so bad that, 
before he could give the book to the people, he had 
to get some very serious evils redressed. Chief among 
these was the habit of marrying foreigners, by which 
means the small community of Jews was being rapidly 
lost among the heathen. Even priests and leading 
citizens were showing a bad example in this respect. 
The result was that Ezra, instead of leading the people 
106 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

in an enthusiastic attempt to make the Temple more 
worthy of Jehovah, was compelled to fight this evil 
in high and low. He secured a large measure of sup- 
port and was able to put a brake on the dangerous 
habit, but it disturbed so many that he lost his in- 
fluence, and was unable to carry out his plan. 1 

Nehemiah and the Wall. — Thirteen years later the 
second attempt was made by the exiles to improve 
matters at Jerusalem. This time Nehemiah was the 
leader, who came with a bodyguard of Persian 
soldiers, and aimed at restoring the city's ruined 
walls. In those days it was felt to be a disgrace for 
a great city to be without walls, and Jerusalem was 
looked down upon because hers had been destroyed. 
It was not easy, however, to build them, because 
her jealous neighbours resented any attempt to 
strengthen her fortifications, and were likely to 
attack the city whenever operations were begun. 
Nehemiah, however, succeeded in kindling the en- 
thusiasm of the people so well, and led them in the 
work with such ability and self-sacrifice, that in 
the astonishingly brief space of fifty-two days the 
walls were built and the gates set up. 2 

■ The Law ' published. — In the rejoicings produced 

1 There may have been other difficulties, such as opposition from 
the satrap of the province. 

2 For the interesting story of these operations and the opposition 
overcome see Neb. ii.-vi. 

107 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

by the success of this effort Ezra saw his opportunity. 
He may have been living in the city all the thirteen 
years, waiting for some turn of events to provide 
the chance of publishing the book, and now at last 
it had come. Nehemiah heartily approved of his 
plans, and the great celebrations for the rebuilding 
of the walls were used for introducing the people to 
the Book of the Law. Standing on a wooden pulpit, 
Ezra read from the book from morning until mid- 
day. 1 On the next day this was repeated, and they 
came in the reading to the institution of the Feast 
of Tabernacles, which had not been kept for ages. 
As the time of the year was just right, they at once 
arranged to keep the feast, and every day of the 
feast the reading and explaining of the Book of the 
Law was continued. Two days after the feast the 
covenant between Jehovah and Israel was solemnly 
ratified, with fasting and confession of sin, on the 
terms laid down in the Law. Thus the Book of the 
Law was formally made known to, and adopted by, 
the Jewish nation. It comprised the first five books 
of the Bible, which together we call the Pentateuch, 
built up by unknown hands out of the Jehovist, 
Elohist, Deuteronomic, and Priestly narratives, them- 
selves based on ancient memorials and laws reaching 
back to Moses and Abraham. It reached its final 

1 See Neh. viii. 
108 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

form among the exiles who remained in Babylonia, 
and was published at Jerusalem, as we have seen, by 
Ezra and Nehemiah in the year 444 B.C. From that 
time it became the acknowledged standard of Jewish 
law and religion, and is recognized as such in all their 
later writings and doings. Henceforth for them there 
was no question as to what the word of God was. 
Discussion in the future was all to centre, not on the 
substance, but on the meaning of the word. 

The Jewish Canon. — That ' the Law ' was accepted 
as Scripture before the other books, we see from the 
form of the Jewish Bible. The Old Testament is 
divided up into three parts, just as we divide the 
whole Bible into two : the Old and New Testaments. 
The first part of the Old Testament the Jews call 
6 the Law,' the second is 6 the Prophets,' and the 
third ' the Writings.' The Law contains only the 
five books, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, with 
which we have been dealing. The Prophets contains 
two groups : the Former Prophets — Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel, and Kings; and the Latter Prophets — the 
three great prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, 
and the Minor Prophets — the twelve from Hosea to 
Malachi making one book. The third part, ' the 
Writings,' is in three groups : (a) the Poetical 
Books — Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; (b) the Five 
Rolls — Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesi- 

109 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

astes, and Esther ; (c) the remaining books — Daniel, 
Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The list of 
books recognized as belonging to the Bible is called 
1 the Canon,' and these three parts of the Jewish 
Bible are the marks of three stages in the growth 
of the Canon of the Old Testament. The first Canon 
was determined when it was publicly ratified in the 
days of Nehemiah. The Canon of the prophets was 
not completed for another two hundred years, al- 
though most of the books belonging to it were in 
existence in Ezra's time, and some, like Joshua and 
Jeremiah, were well known. But for a while the 
Pentateuch overshadowed everything else, and these 
other books were not considered worthy to be 
placed beside the Book of the Law. 

The Samaritan Split. — Ezra and Nehemiah were 
not content merely to read the book. They set to 
work to bring the life of the people into conformity 
with its teaching. Nehemiah used the power he held 
under the Persian monarch to enforce the law against 
marrying foreigners, and was supported by a 
majority of the population; but there were many 
who thought this was going too far. Among these 
were some of the leading Jews, several of whom left 
the city, moved into Samaria, and built a rival temple 
on Mount Gerizim. This, following the similar quarrel 
due to the opponents of Ezra, was the origin of the 
110 



THE EXILE AND THE BOOK OF THE LAW 

deep enmity between the Jews and Samaritans. From 
our point of view, however, there is a special interest 
in their Bible. For the Samaritans have a Bible, but 
it includes only the five books of the Law, and is 
called the Samaritan Pentateuch. And the fact that 
it has none of the prophets of the Second Canon 
shows that when the split occurred the Hebrew Bible 
contained only Ezra's Book of the Law. 

"A Tale of Two Cities." — We began this chapter 
with a picture of Babylon : we close it with the 
little community in Jerusalem. What a contrast 
lies in their subsequent fates ! The majesty and 
might of Babylon have vanished, and for ages her 
ruins have been lost in the desert. There is not 
a people to-day that looks back to her with pride : 
her children have perished with her. But the Holy 
City, which then lay in ruins, despite all the sieges, 
burnings, and massacres she has known, persists; 
and in all the ends of the earth devout hearts think 
of her with thrills of deep emotion, and pray for the 
peace of Jerusalem. Perished is the conqueror, but the 
captive lives. And she lives mainly because, in the 
dark days of her exile, she did not yield to despair, 
but used the opportunity to build up the Book of the 
Law, and to gather together that which is the most 
renewing element in any nation, the noblest visions 
of her noblest sons, their visions of God. 

Ill 



CHAPTER VI 
THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

1. Glimpses of Jewish History from Ezra to Christ 

The Jewish Colony. The Persian and Greek Empires 
The New Israel and Language. The Dispersion 
The Maccabees. Palestine a Roman Province 

2. Influences which formed the Second Canon 

Veneration for the Past — Histories, Great Prophets 
Centralized Worship in Jerusalem — The Psalms 
Jewish Separateness — Book of Jonah 
The Silencing of Prophecy — " The Book of the Twelve " 

3. Influences which Completed the Old Testament Canon 

Resistance to Persecution — Esther and Daniel 
The Problem of Suffering — Job and Ecclesiastes 
Veneration for the Past again — Sacred Names and Language 

4. The Old Testament as a Whole 

The Message of a Prophetic Nation 

The Incompleteness of the Old Testament 

Its Abiding Worth 

BY the clever art of the photographer a film 
can be produced picturing a man recalling his 
past life. The figure of the man remains 
throughout, and beside him a succession of incidents 
from his career is thrown upon the screen, each 
fading out as it is concluded, like the visions of a 
dream. With some such cunning fancy we must 
112 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

now try to realize the position of the little Jewish 
colony, in and around Jerusalem, throughout the 
movements of the great empires which swept over 
it during the next four hundred years. Were it 
possible in this way to revive clearly all the changes 
of that period, we should understand the influences 
which moulded the rest of the Old Testament, and 
led to its completion. For that, however, we should 
need more pictures than our book would hold. But 
perhaps even a few scenes will give life to the story, 
and help us in our endeavour to appreciate the 
Bible. 

The Jewish Colony. — The first picture on our screen 
shows us their land at the beginning of the period. 
It is not the whole of the country of David and 
Solomon; nor even the smaller kingdom of Judah, 
which resulted from the division in the days of 
Rehoboam; it is simply Jerusalem and the country 
surrounding it within a radius of ten or fifteen miles. 
Over that area we see the scattered homes, where 
the returned exiles have established themselves; 
and in the land beyond we note the envious faces 
of the tribes which had striven to prevent the re- 
storation of the capital. Immediately to the north 
the Samaritans are planted, nearer in race but still 
more bitterly opposed, because of the recent quarrel. 
We scan the hills and valleys, from east to west and 
H 113 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

from north to south. From any point a farmer could 
bring his produce to the Jerusalem market in a single 
day's journey. It is not a country : it is scarcely a 
county ; and the inhabitants are so few that we must 
think of them as a colony rather than a nation. 

The Colony a Church. — The hills fade from our 
view and we find ourselves in the council chamber 
of the Temple. In the seat of authority is the High 
Priest. He is the real governor of the colony. When 
Nehemiah reorganized the community on the basis 
of the Book of the Law, he made that book their 
system of government, with the result that the 
Temple became their law courts, the priests their 
police and judges, and the High Priest their king. 
Jerusalem is not so much a colony as a church. 
The Persian emperor may send an officer to collect 
taxes and keep order, but the real ruler of Jeru- 
salem henceforth is the High Priest. 

The Persian Empire. — The Temple on Mount Zion 
recedes to the far horizon, and a gorgeous palace 
rises into view. It is the home of the Persian 
emperors. Persian warriors guard its gates. Per- 
sian officers, richly apparelled, come to hold audi- 
ence with the monarch. Couriers pass out and in : 
some on camels, dusty with desert sand, and others 
on the finest horses of Arabia. Outside the city 
we see armies muster and march away : now to 
114 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Syria, now to Egypt, and anon to India : some- 
times to victory and spoils and glory, and sometimes 
to their doom. Around that palace gathers the his- 
tory of the world for the next hundred years. When 
a question is raised concerning Jerusalem, search 
must be made in the archives, for the emperor thinks 
little, and remembers less, of the history of so small 
a portion of his world-wide empire. 

The Greek Empires. — Again the scene changes. 
We are in the Plain of Sharon, watching a mighty 
army, with the steady tramp of discipline and the 
confident bearing of success, march southward along 
the great coast route toward Arabia and Egypt. 
Who are they? Their faces are tanned with ex- 
posure, but they are not dark skinned like the Per- 
sians. They are white men. And who is that officer 
rushing past in his chariot, receiving from every 
company the cheers which show him to be the idol 
of his men? It is Alexander the Great; and this 
is the army with which, between 334 and 323 B.C., 
he put an end to the Persian dominion, and con- 
quered the world. For the Jews this meant a change 
of masters. On the death of Alexander his empire 
was divided, and for most of the next 120 years, 
till 203, Palestine was under the Greek rule of 
the Ptolemies of Egypt. Then it was annexed 
by the Syrian empire, whose rulers are called the 

115 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Seleucidae, and remained in their power for sixty 
years, until it was made independent in 142 by the 
Maccabeans. 

A New Israel and Language. — Now we are back in 
Jerusalem. Two centuries have rolled by since 
Ezra's work was done. We are in the third century 
b.c. The High Priest has become the pope of 
Judaism. The little colony has multiplied, and its 
people, now scattered all over their ancient terri- 
tory, have made it once more a Hebrew land. 
Wherever they have settled they still look to Jeru- 
salem as the centre of their religion, contribute to 
the upkeep of the Temple, and visit it at least once 
a year. It is this centralized religion and increased 
patriotism which have made them able to keep their 
faith among the heathen, win many of the Gentiles 
to their ways, and become again the leading race in 
the country. But while they have been altering 
Palestine into a Hebrew land, they themselves have 
been altered. Their language has changed. It re- 
mains similar to the Hebrew of old, and yet it is not 
quite the same. They can still read and understand 
their Scriptures; but their speech has been so in- 
fluenced by much intercourse with the other inhabi- 
tants that it has gradually been transformed into 
what we call Aramaic, and Hebrew has become a 
dead language. 
116 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Dispersion. — But what is this? The sea 
spreads out before us wide and restless, its wavelets 
lapping against the quay walls of a great and fair 
city. The Jewish face meets us here also at almost 
every turn. Frequently we find buildings inscribed 
with Hebrew characters, which turn out to be syna- 
gogues, and could we search the rooms of some of 
those stately mansions we should find copies of the 
Scriptures, no longer written in Hebrew but trans- 
lated into Greek, the language which had become the 
commercial language of the world. This is a picture 
of Alexandria, and the people are Jews of the Dis- 
persion, representatives of countless numbers who 
have found their way into many lands, but who still 
look to the city on the hill as the home of their 
race and the earthly temple of their God. 

The Maccabees. — Once more Mount Zion rises 
before our eyes; but terror is printed on the faces 
of her sons, and there is bloodshed within her walls. 
A brutal Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes, has set 
himself to stamp out her religion. A pig has been 
offered on the Temple altar. Throughout the land 
the Scriptures are being seized, and the faithful per- 
secuted to death. The cruel tyranny is, however, 
broken by the Maccabean revolt (167-162), 1 which 

1 The Maccabean Revolt was started at Modein, some twenty 
miles from Jerusalem, by an aged priest named Mattathias, who 
refused to offer sacrifice according to pagan custom when com- 

117 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

for heroism and genius is not surpassed in history. 
The grim weight of numbers is all against the Jews, 
but they inflict defeat after defeat upon their op- 
pressors, win freedom for their religion, and a 
measure of independence for their nation, which now 
once more, if only for a limited period (142-68), 
becomes a self-governed state. 

Palestine a Roman Province. — One other picture 
we must throw upon our screen. Again it is an army, 
marching this time upon Jerusalem itself. In con- 
trast with any we have hitherto met, however, this 
army is so perfectly organized and disciplined that 
it acts like a machine. Its legions move or stand 

manded to do so by the Greek officer. A weaker Jew coming 
forward to do it, Mattathias rushed forward, slew both the Jew 
and the officer, and tore down the altar. Then he fled to the hills, 
called on all the faithful to join him, and soon gathered a desper- 
ate band of heroes ready to die for their religion, who went about 
destroying heathen altars and enforcing Jewish customs. Next 
year, in 166, Mattathias died, and the leadership fell to his son 
Judas, the greatest warrior that Israel ever produced. He trained 
and organized his men so well that he was able to defeat the 
Syrian army at Bethoron (166), at Emmaus, and at Bethzur (165). 
In December of that year he reconsecrated the Temple at 
Jerusalem, an event celebrated in the Feast of the Dedication. In 
162 the Syrians sent a vast army which defeated Judas at Bethzur 
and laid siege to the Temple, but the army was recalled and a 
treaty made securing religious liberty to the Jews. Judas con- 
tinued to lead the Jews in a struggle for full independence, and 
defeated another Syrian army at Adasar in 161, but was himself 
defeated and killed later in the year by an overwhelming force at 
Elasa. Jonathan and Simon, brothers of Judas, followed him in 
the leadership, and under Simon independence was secured in 
142 B.C. 
118 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

as if swayed by a single will. Its standard bearers 
carry no flags, but each holds a staff on which is 
mounted a metal casting of an eagle. This eagle is 
the symbol of the Roman Republic. The iron heel 
has come at last. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Per- 
sian, and Greek empires have rolled over the hills 
of Palestine; and now, in 63 B.C., the might of the 
Roman sweeps into Jerusalem. The short-lived in- 
dependence of the Jews is at an end. Palestine is 
in the hands of Pompey. Roman sentinels guard the 
gates of the Holy City. Before the High Priest's 
main decisions can be carried out, they must be 
approved by a Roman governor. The land of the 
Rabbis is a province of the Roman Empire. 



INFLUENCES WHICH FORMED THE 
SECOND CANON 

From these glimpses of the history of the four 
hundred years between Nehemiah and New Testa- 
ment times, we turn to consider the manner in 
which, under the influence of these varying condi- 
tions, the Old Testament was completed. At the 
commencement of the period we have a struggling 
little community in Jerusalem, with a Bible consist- 
ing only of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 
and Deuteronomy. At the end of it we have the 

119 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

great Jewish church, still centred in Jerusalem, but 
represented, as we saw at Alexandria, by synagogues 
all over the ancient world, and with a Bible com- 
posed no longer of five books, but of thirty-nine, 
the whole of our present Old Testament. As already 
pointed out, most of the additional thirty-four 
books were well known in Ezra's day : but the steps 
by which they came to be placed beside the books 
of Moses, and to be joined by others, we must now 
try to trace. We shall find the explanation in the 
activities and sufferings of the little community at 
Jerusalem, tossed and tempest driven in the storms 
through which the old empires grew and decayed. 
Amid all the changes of that history, God was 
working for the good of the people of those times, 
and for those who should come after them, whose 
lives have been enriched by the greatest treasure 
the ancient world has bequeathed to us, the Old 
Testament of the Jews. 

Veneration for the Past. — First, then, we must 
recognize the influence of that great veneration for 
the past which sprang up in the Exile and worked 
continuously among the s children of the captivity ' 
in the restored capital. No greatness remained to 
them in their present state. They were despised 
and oppressed. But the ground they trod was sacred 
to the memory of a great past. When they drew 
120 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

nigh to the city and saw its walls, they thrilled 
with the pride of ancestry. When they gathered in 
the Temple they recalled the richer building of 
Solomon. As they listened to the reading of the 
Commandments they stood again amid the awe and 
splendour of Sinai. Forced by their present poverty 
to find inspiration in the past, everything connected 
with the times when they were a free nation under 
their own kings became exceedingly precious. Now 
among these things were a number of writings, 
which told the history of those days, and told it, 
not as ordinary school-books tell history, but as a 
prophet tells it, showing how the sins of their 
fathers had led them into disaster. Was it to be 
wondered at that they began to count these books 
as sacred, to read from them in the synagogues, and 
gradually to give them a place alongside the Book 
of the Law ? It was thus that the books of Joshua 
and Judges, Samuel and Kings, very early in this 
period, acquired that sanctity and authority which 
led to their inclusion among the Holy Scriptures. 

The Great Prophets. — And if this happened with 
books of history, it was bound to happen with books 
of prophecy : for therein men spoke directly in the 
name of Jehovah. Such books do not wait to have 
their inspiration discovered : they claim it. The 
men of his time might ridicule Isaiah; they might 

121 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

throw Jeremiah into a dungeon ; but the c children 
of the captivity ' judged the prophets in the light 
of all the sufferings that befell an impenitent nation, 
and knew that they had been sent by God. So 
the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were also 
placed with the Law, and exercised such an influence 
that this second group, growing up around the Law, 
began to be called ' the Prophets,' although includ- 
ing several which were really histories. Thus venera- 
tion for the past secured the recognition of quite 
a number of books, and led to their being regularly 
read in the synagogue services ; a step which natur- 
ally culminated in their reception into the Canon. 

Centralized Worship. The Psalms. — The next 
great influence to be noticed is that of the centralized 
worship in the Temple at Jerusalem. The fact that 
there, and there alone, as laid down in the Book 
of the Law, could the sacrifices be offered, made 
everything connected with the Temple services 
sacred. The Jew did not share our knowledge that 
God can be worshipped truly at any place and time. 
It was Jesus who taught us that. The Jew could 
meet in the Synagogue and pray; but he regarded 
such worship as a makeshift, a poor substitute for 
the real thing, merely a means of educating his 
children and reminding himself, lest he forget his 
privileges and lose touch with the hope of Israel. 
122 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

For true worship he must go to Jerusalem. Thus 
the practice of going up to the feasts grew, and 
became a regular feature of the people's life. Any 
book that was regularly employed at the Temple 
services became, through that simple fact, one of 
their sacred books; and thus the final stamp of 
authority was impressed upon books which had be- 
come precious enough to gain a place in those great 
services. One book especially owes its place in the 
Old Testament to its use in the Temple. Written 
by many hands, in times far separated, sometimes 
out of triumphant faith and sometimes well nigh 
in despair, it gathers up nearly every joy and sorrow 
that can fall to human lot, and spreads them all out 
before the throne of God. That collection of writ- 
ings is the Book of Psalms, the hymn-book of the 
Second Temple, and the finest flower of Jewish wor- 
ship. It did not readily attain a position in the 
Canon : it was so different from the other books. 
Slow recognition, however, was an advantage, for 
it was able to go on growing throughout most of the 
four hundred years. But by the end of that time the 
Book of Psalms had gained a place as sure as any, 
and certainly as well deserved. 

Jewish Separateness. — The third point to be con- 
sidered is the narrowing influence of the isolation 
the Jews were maintaining, in keeping themselves 

123 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

so separate from other races. This policy of 
Nehemiah and Ezra certainly kept the Jews to- 
gether, and saved them from losing their identity 
as a nation. It also preserved their religion, and 
the great revelations of their prophets. But on the 
Jews themselves it had some sad results. Gradu- 
ally it created that spiritual pride, bigotry, and 
contempt for other races, which so disfigured their 
later religious life. They picked out all the promises 
of Divine aid, and built upon them a hope of national 
greatness, in which they should be the masters of 
the world. They took the covenant with Abraham 
to mean that nobody but a Jew was precious in 
God's sight. In many this grew to such an extent 
that scorn of the foreigner became the strongest 
part of their religion. But in every dark age of 
Israel's history there was some prophet to protest 
against the evil of the day, and now also the more 
broad-minded speedily saw that this hatred of other 
races was contrary to the earlier teaching about God, 
and especially to His promise that through Abraham 
6 all the nations of the earth ' should be blessed. 
Hence, from this quarter, there came one of the 
most powerful statements ever written of God's 
love for all mankind ; a book which showed in strik- 
ing fashion that heathen nations can repent and 
obey God, that God delights to have mercy upon 
124 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

them, and that Israel's duty is not to despise but 
to be a missionary to the Gentiles. 

The Book of Jonah. — This protest was the book 
of Jonah. It is a small book, containing altogether 
only forty-eight verses, but written in the story 
fashion which, of all forms of teaching, is the 
best for penetrating ignorance and prejudice. 
In this manner it teaches three great lessons : 
(1) that God seeks the salvation of every race, looks 
in deepest pity on the masses crowded in great cities, 
and delights to pardon when they repent; (2) that 
men of heathen races pray to God and are heard by 
Him, that they are capable of great kindness and 
self-sacrifice, and often more ready to listen to God's 
messengers than are those who call themselves His 
people; and (3) that the Jew had been false to 
his duty, because, whereas God had sent him ta be 
a missionary to other nations, he had tried to keep 
the knowledge of God to himself, and had sought the 
destruction of those he ought to have saved. 

Symbolic Narrative. — Such teaching was a flat 
contradiction of what had become the popular reli- 
gion of Jerusalem in the fourth century B.C. Doubt- 
less those who believed these truths tried to teach 
them, but were met with a scorn which would have 
killed their endeavours and left no trace, but for 
this book. So they wrote this story, putting the 

125 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

truths in the form of a parable or symbolic narra- 
tive, and choosing as the hero of the tale Jonah, 
a prophet whose name was well known from 2 Kings 
xiv. 25, but of whose life they were in ignorance. 
Such symbolic stories were by no means new. 
Jeremiah had made use of the method, 1 so had 
Ezekiel, 2 and there are many other instances. In 
the New Testament our Lord relies almost entirely on 
parable for conveying His great messages. And 
outside the Bible we have in Bunyan a prince among 
those who convey truth in this simple and memor- 
able manner. The book itself makes no claim to 
have been written by Jonah : indeed it implies the 
opposite; for it speaks of Nineveh as a city of the 
past, 3 whereas in Jonah's time it was the flourish- 
ing capital of the world; and it gives the wrong 
title to its ruler, 4 who was the emperor of the great 
Assyrian dominion, and not to be called the king of 
Nineveh any more than George V is to be called 
the king of London. Jonah lived in the days of 
Jeroboam II, 782-741 B.C., and this story, which 
makes use of him for its hero, was written hundreds 
of years later in the post-exilic period. 

Effect of Jonah. — The parable was read and spoken 
of by Jews everywhere. Many who did not like its 

1 Jer. xxv. 15 ff. 3 Chap. iii. 3. 

2 Ezek. iv. 5 ff. and elsewhere. ^ Chap. iii. 6. 

126 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

teaching enjoyed the story. Perhaps its meaning 
was not always seen. But the story took fast hold, 
and gradually its truths got home into many hearts. 
They saw that Jonah represented their unfaithful 
nation. They saw in the fish a picture of the Exile 
that had swallowed their national life, but from 
which they had been able to return. They recog- 
nized in the prayers of the heathen sailors and their 
efforts to avoid drowning Jonah the spirit that is 
always acceptable to God. The quick and thorough 
repentance of the Ninevites made them feel afresh 
the hardness and impenitence of their own country- 
men, who had received so many prophets and re- 
jected them. Above all, in God's rebuke to Jonah 
for his cruel temper, which desired that the Ninevites 
should not repent but be destroyed, they were shown 
the evil of the spiritual pride so rampant in their 
own days. The great parable did not save Israel 
from her prejudices, but it helped to create an inner 
Israel of men who had risen above the national pride 
and caught the wider spirit of the prophets. It re- 
mains, too, for all time, as the great call to mis- 
sionary activity among the nations that sit in 
darkness, and the masses that crowd the courts and 
alleys of our great cities. For we are all in danger 
of thinking more of the fruit-tree in our own little 
garden than of the great multitudes of men and 

127 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

women around us, and so of deserving God's rebuke 
to Jonah, " Thou hast had pity on the gourd . . . 
which came up in a night, and perished in a night : 
and should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great 
city; wherein are more than six score thousand 
persons that cannot discern between their right 
hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? " 
Authority of the Law. — This book of Jonah was 
one of the last to be included in The Book of the 
Twelve, 1 and we are now in a position to consider 
what it was which led to the completion of the 
second Canon, the great group of Old Testament 
books known as ( the Prophets.' The chief cause 
was a deepened sense of the value of prophecy. We 
saw in our last chapter how the Book of the Law 
was published, and made the standard of Jewish life 
by Nehemiah and Ezra. At once it gained great 
authority : but by constant use as the umpire in 
every dispute, and the guide in every important 
action, that authority grew, until it came to be 
looked upon as the one supreme statement of God's 
will. Any utterance that did not base itself on the 
Law was despised and rejected. Thus the nation, 
when seeking guidance, learned to turn, not to the 
prophet, but to the interpreter of the Law, as the 
man who spoke for God. The priest gained power, 

1 See next page — " The Minor Prophets." 
128 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

the scribe x gained even more power, and the living 
prophet was ignored. When a man burns with a 
message, as Jeremiah did, he must speak. But when 
that man himself and everybody around him looks 
to a book for everything, he is content to urge a 
closer attention to this or that which is already 
written. Thus the voice of the prophet ceased to 
be heard in Israel, and after a while men came to 
think that prophecy was dead. 

The Minor Prophets. — But the prophets had done 
too much for Israel to be forgotten; and as men 
realized that a long time had passed since a prophet 
had spoken among them, they began to value the 
work of the prophets more highly and to give atten- 
tion to their writings. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and 
Ezekiel had long held a place in the esteem of the 
people second only to ' the Law.' The historical 
books, full of the same prophetic spirit and telling 
the loved story of the days of the kingdom, were 

l The scribes were the men who made copies of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, which had to be done by hand, and who became the 
recognized authorities on 'the Law.' At first they were priests, like 
Ezra, but later many were laymen. The importance of * the Law ' 
brought them to the front ; the decay of Hebrew as a spoken 
language made trained interpreters necessary, and the multiplica- 
tion of synagogues, where the Scriptures were regularly read and 
expounded, supplied them with a splendid opportunity. In the 
days of Greek influence, when many of the priests adopted pagan 
religion, the scribes remained the great teachers of the national 
faith, and received the support of the people, who honoured them 
with such titles as 'Rabbi.' 

I 129 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

associated with them. Other prophets, whose writ- 
ings were of smaller extent, like those of Amos, 
Hosea, and Micah, were also prized ; and these were 
now gathered up into one book, containing all the 
smaller prophetic works, to which later prophecies 
were gradually added until it contained no less than 
twelve little works of prophecy. This Book of the 
Twelve, as they called it, corresponded to our twelve 
Minor Prophets : Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, 
Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The word ' minor ' 
refers to the shortness of these books, not to their 
importance; and is very misleading, because at 
least two of them, Amos and Hosea, are among the 
very greatest of Hebrew prophets : and Jonah, 
despite its brevity, rises to as great heights as any 
of them, and comes as near to Christ in its teaching. 
However, what we have to realize is that it was 
the silencing of prophecy by the authority of the 
Law which made the nation conscious of the value 
of prophecy, and led to the second stage in the 
growth of the Old Testament, the addition of the 
Prophets to the Law, so that henceforth their Bible 
was known as ( the Law and the Prophets.' 



130 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

INFLUENCES WHICH COMPLETED THE 
OLD TESTAMENT CANON 
Resistance to Persecution: Esther, Daniel. — We 
have spoken of the silencing of the prophet, but 
prophecy can never be really silenced. The weight 
of a great authority, like the Law promulgated under 
Ezra and Nehemiah, may prevent men from speak- 
ing in the style of the prophets who lived before 
those books were recognized; but when men are 
burning with a message from God, they will find 
some ways of telling out the truth that is in them. 
And men's hearts did begin to burn again in Israel 
in the dark days, of which we had a glimpse among 
our pictures, when many were dying for the faith, 
so much so that we must count resistance to per- 
secution among the influences which helped to com- 
plete the Old Testament. Those were days of great 
suffering for the faithful Jews; and many, rather 
than bear the losses and pains of persecution, threw 
over their religion and joined the pagan multitude. 
The sight of these deserting the faith, and forsaking 
the true God to worship corrupting idols, stirred the 
prophetic spirit to renewed activity. Drawing from 
the resources of the past, prophetic souls tried to 
inspire men to faithfulness and endurance by cir- 
culating accounts of the heroic deeds of their fathers. 

131 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

It was thus that the story of Esther appeared, a 
narrative well calculated to strengthen the weak 
and inspire renewed hope. And it was thus that 
Daniel, the greatest effort of the kind, was written; 
appealing in the same way to heroism through the 
story of the brave steadfastness of Daniel and his 
friends ; and developing a new line of thought, now 
called apocalyptic, 1 which aimed at encouraging the 
Jews by showing how, through the rise and fall of 
empires, God is working toward the establishment 
of His own abiding Kingdom. Other similar stories 
were written, which never found a place in the 
Hebrew Old Testament, though many of them found 
their way into the Septuagint, as the Greek trans- 
lation of the Old Testament was called, where the 
early Christians became familiar with them and 
through which they are associated with the Old 
Testament under the name of the Apocrypha. These 
brave appeals were not made in vain. They pro- 
duced the daring which enabled hundreds to die 
rather than give up their faith, created that splen- 
did enthusiasm and courage which through the Mac- 
cabean Revolt broke the power of Greek tyranny, 
and gave to Israel a new lease of national life and 
liberty. 

i From Apocalypse = Revelation, the title of the last book in the 
New Testament, which is a writing of this type. 

132 






THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

The Problem of Suffering : Ecclesiastes, Job. — 
There were, however, other fruits on this bitter tree 
of persecution, and before we close our survey we 
must consider the influence of the problem of suffer- 
ing, as it was forced upon thoughtful Israelites by 
their national experiences. Before the fires of revolt 
had been kindled, some of these men felt deeply 
the losses and sorrows which had swept over them, 
not only as a nation, but also individually. The 
emptiness of human triumph, and the depth of 
human tragedy, had made some among them ques- 
tion whether God really did rule in human life at 
all. And among the men who thus tried to examine 
God's ways were two who wrote their thoughts in 
books which have been included in the Bible. One 
of them is Ecclesiastes, written by a man who saw 
how fleeting are our joys and was oppressed with 
the vanity of all earthly pleasures and possessions. 
Yet he clung to God, found the way of wisdom in 
obedience to His will, and showed us how a sad and 
depressed soul may still find a place among those 
who love and worship. But the greatest book deal- 
ing with human sorrow is Job, a marvellous poem, 
in which, using the case of Job as a starting point, 
some unnamed but wonderful poet has tried to find 
the meaning of life's pain and disappointments. The 
book contains passages of exquisite beauty and pro- 

183 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

found insight, some of which are among the finest 
jewels in the treasury of Scripture. It proclaims 
no cure for the ills of life, but it teaches humility 
and thought for others, and that deep trust in the 
will and wisdom of God, armed with which we can 
endure hardship, and rise above it stronger and 
purer for our trials. 

Sacred Names and Language: Proverbs, Ruth, 
etc. — For our last consideration we return to the 
first. That veneration for the past which sprang 
up in the Exile, and afterward gave the historic 
books from Joshua to Kings their place in the 
Second Canon, continued to operate throughout this 
period. It gave increasing value to all their sacred 
possessions, and strengthened still further the hold 
of the Temple, its sacrifices and services, and the 
Law and the Prophets on the affections of the people. 
The Hebrew language itself had now come to be 
reckoned among those precious things of former 
days : for, as we saw in our opening pictures, the 
use of Hebrew gradually gave place to Aramaic for 
popular intercourse, and to Greek for purposes of 
study and commerce. The inclusion of the remain- 
ing books of the Old Testament — Ruth, Proverbs, 
the Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Chronicles 
— can all be understood from this point of view. 
Chronicles includes Ezra and Nehemiah, which at 
184 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

first were all parts of one volume. Each of these 
books has its own value, without which no notice 
would have been taken of it; but each is also asso- 
ciated with some great figure of the past, which fact 
gave it a strong hold upon this love of bygone days. 
Ruth is precious because it relates to the ancestry 
of David. The Song of Songs and Proverbs were 
both connected with the name of Solomon, whose 
proverbial wisdom had made him draw around him, 
like a magnet, all the wise sayings of the nation. 
Lamentations was looked upon as the poetical ex- 
pression of Jeremiah's grief for fallen Jerusalem. 
Chronicles tells again, with many variations, and 
with more attention to details connected with the 
Temple services, the story of the kings; and brings 
it down, in Ezra and Nehemiah, to the restoration of 
the Temple and the publication of the Law. These 
books then, differing greatly in subject and style, 
are alike in that they speak of the past, and it 
was chiefly this fact that won for them their place : 
for the past contained all that gave the people their 
sense of national greatness, and out of it flowed 
that mighty hope for the future which had grown 
up around the promise of the Messiah. On the other 
hand the mere fact that others were written in Greek, 
and therefore void of all claim to antiquity, was 
sufficient to keep out of the Canon some great and 

135 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

beautiful books, produced in this period, such as 
the apocryphal book of Wisdom. Thus we arrive 
at the third stage, the Canon of ' The Writings,' 
that miscellaneous group of prophecy and history, 
poetry and proverb, tragedy and love song, despair- 
ing doubt and triumphant faith, which is the com- 
pletion of the Jewish Old Testament, and is alluded 
to in the New, under the title of its most important 
book, where reference is made to " the Law of Moses, 
and the Prophets, and the Psalms." x 

THE OLD TESTAMENT AS A WHOLE 
A Prophetic Nation. — In all these chapters dealing 
with the Old Testament, and in this last chapter 
especially, there stands out in unmistakable manner 
the way in which God worked through the life of a 
nation to give us our Bible. At first we are in- 
clined to think that the Bible was made by a few 
men; but gradually, as the whole story grows be- 
fore us, we see how very little individual men had 
to do with it. Behind the early movements of the 
Hebrews, in which it all began, was a historic situa- 
tion, which the leader did not create, and which 
he could only handle as God enabled him. In a 
later age the prophets did a wonderful work : but 

1 Luke xxiv. 44. 

136 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

each of these learned from those who went before, 
from the Spirit of God within, and, not least, from 
the circumstances of his day. Then came the writers, 
some themselves prophets, others telling history as 
they saw it in the light of their growing faith, while 
others again are expressing their thoughts in parable 
and psalm. Hundreds of years are rolling on as this 
proceeds. Kings come and go. Disaster follows 
disaster. Things hidden in one age become clear 
in another. The fires of human joy and sorrow con- 
sume the stubble and discover the gold. Writings 
are lost and discovered, sifted and combined, and 
finally chosen or rejected according to the needs of 
a people struggling for existence. Gradually from 
this seething cataract of troubled life there emerges 
the Bible. We cannot think of such a book as the 
work of a few men. It is something far greater. It is 
the record of God's revelation of Himself to a nation 
in and through the long ages of its history. The Old 
Testament is not only the message of so many 
prophets : it is the message of a prophetic people, 
blind and blundering often enough, but in the tragedy 
of their blindness, no less than in the glory of their 
splendid vision, God's prophet to the nations. 

Three Chief Messages. — Lastly we must try to 
realize where the Old Testament leaves us. It said 
much : but it left much to be said. Before the 

137 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Exile its message may be summed up as the call 
to know God. Through all these ages Israel's peril 
was a degraded idea of Jehovah; and the labour of 
the prophets was to show that Jehovah was a God 
of righteousness, demanding justice and truth before 
all ceremony and sacrifice. Then came the national 
collapse and the Exile, when men's hearts failed 
and all seemed lost. In such a time the need is for 
faith, and the message of the prophets of the Exile 
is the call to trust God. Following this we have the 
return and publication of the Law, and the main 
emphasis after the Exile is on the call to obey God: 
to obey the revelation already given, by strict ob- 
servance of the written word, by loyal support of 
the sanctuary, by sending abroad the light of God's 
will, and in the hour of persecution by fidelity even 
unto death. 

The Old Testament Incomplete. — Now these three 
— knowledge, trust, and obedience — are great things ; 
and if they had been complete there might have 
been little need for a New Testament. But when 
we go into details we find them lacking at many 
points. The prophets give us a true knowledge of 
God, but not the whole of the truth. They taught 
His righteousness, some of them taught His love; 
but they did not make men see that love is the 
highest thing in God or man. At its very best the 
138 



THE COMPLETION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Old Testament brings us only to a loving righteous- 
ness, whereas Christ brings us to a righteous love. He 
makes love central and supreme. Again, the trust 
of the Old Testament is not the trust of the child 
in the loving Father; it is rather the hope that 
some day the tide will turn, and the oppressed people 
become wealthy conquerors. It is the hope of a 
national prosperity, that shall mean riches for every 
home : not the hope that every man shall be so 
purified that the whole nation shall be made happy. 
Even into the books themselves there creeps a sense 
of this incompleteness. They speak in many places 
of One who shall come after to fill up the teaching, 
a promise which gave birth to the hope of the 
Messiah, and united with their dreams of national 
greatness to make them look for a conquering king. 
But the prophets had spoken of a new covenant in 
the hearts of the people, of a prophet like unto Moses 
who taught them the path of duty, and of a suffer- 
ing servant of Jehovah who by his agony should 
secure their peace. All alike, however, pointed for- 
ward to some greater One, and the spirit of expecta- 
tion spread itself over all their religious life. The 
fierce and prejudiced waited for the signal of revolt 
and the shout of victory over their foes : the humble 
and spiritual waited for the Day spring from on High. 
The Old Testament created an unsatisfied nation; 

139 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

and that was the inevitable result of its own incom- 
pleteness. With all its power and beauty it is an 
unfinished book. 

Abiding Worth. — And yet the value of the Old 
Testament can scarcely be over-estimated. The 
heart of man remains the same in all ages. Elijah 
and Amos were of like passions with the men of 
to-day, and the faith and zeal that sustained them 
in their heroic battles with vice and superstition 
we need still, for the warfare still continues. The 
exiles in Babylon wept in their bereavement and 
prayed for restoration with a passionate longing 
which has made their sufferings and hopes the com- 
fort and inspiration of oppressed peoples ever since. 
The Temple worshippers, seeking a closer communion 
with Jehovah, gave utterance to the soul's yearning 
for God in language so reverent and so feeling that 
the Psalms have become the most used book of 
devotions the world contains. The Scriptures that 
grew out of the struggles of a nation appeal to every 
nation in its struggles; and the higher ideals set 
before us in Christ calls us to a conflict which makes 
the record of the earlier strivings doubly instructive 
and precious. As long as man has a war to wage 
for God, humanity, and his own soul, so long will 
the Old Testament remain, next to the Story of 
Jesus, the greatest religious treasure we possess. 
140 



APPENDIX 

ON TELLING BIBLE STORIES 

The use of this book by young people who are teaching 
in the Sunday school, as well as by day-school teachers, 
makes it desirable to emphasize a few practical points in 
regard to the telling of stories from the Bible. For all 
general questions in regard to telling stories, such as the 
kind of stories children of different ages enjoy, the 
elements of action, rhyme, and repetition, the place of the 
wonderful, methods of getting up a story, and delivering 
it — for all such points readers are referred to books 
entirely devoted to this subject. For general purposes 
perhaps the best is How to Tell Stories to Children, by 
Sara Cone Bryant (Harrap), and an invaluable book for 
the religious worker is Stories and Story-Telling, by E. P. 
St John (Sunday School Union). 1 

Be Clear About the Truth You Want to Teach.— 
A good story is worth telling merely for the sake of the 
pleasure it gives. But we generally tell Bible stories to 
teach Bible truths, and for that purpose the first essen- 
tial is to know exactly the message we desire to convey. 
The whole story must then be arranged to bring out that 
truth, and, in particular, the message must be thoroughly 
enforced by the climax. Beware, however, of moralizing. 

l See also Miss Katherine D. Cather's excellent Educating by 
Story-telling (Harrap, 1919). 

141 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

People persist in weakening the force of stories by 
tacking on a moral at the end and thus producing an 
anticlimax. This warning, however, does not mean that 
the moral has to be omitted; on the contrary it means 
that the moral must be woven into the story itself, which 
is making more of the moral, not less. The story must 
proclaim its own truth ; it must be " truth embodied in a 
tale," and so well embodied that as long as the tale is 
remembered the truth also is remembered. Moralizing is 
a confession of failure : it means either that we have 
chosen a story which does not clearly express the truth 
we wish to teach or that we have told the story so badly 
that the meaning is obscure. Let us, therefore, be quite 
sure of our message and that the story conveys that 
message and not another. 

Work Up the Background. — The effectiveness of a 
story depends largely on vivid detail, and for this we 
need knowledge and constructive imagination. We must 
see the incident. When our story relates to familiar sur- 
roundings this is not difficult because we can readily 
supply the setting, but to supply the setting for Biblical 
stories we need knowledge of Palestine and its ancient 
customs, its hills and valleys, houses and shrines, cos- 
tumes and means of travel, agricultural instruments and 
domestic furniture, weights and measures, how they 
reckoned money, how they measured time, and so on. 
Each tale makes its demand upon our knowledge of the 
land and people, and the more of these details we 
possess the more living our narrative will be. Our con- 
structive imagination has to piece together the details 
given in the Scriptural account and those we can gather 
142 



APPENDIX 

elsewhere until the whole story stands out vividly in our 
minds with plenty of colour and life. Some people have 
an imagination which tempts them to be independent of 
study. They can invent backgrounds more than can be 
told. But that is a misleading, dangerous, and illegiti- 
mate use of the imagination. Whenever our story has a 
definite historical or geographical situation, we must 
endeavour to be true to the facts of the case, and the only 
true way to the vivid telling of stories of other lands is to 
study the background and reconstruct the situation in 
our minds, until we see the whole thing happening as we 
speak, and make others see it with us. 

Be True to the Narrative. — We must not take liber- 
ties in dealing with Scriptural stories. Other teachers 
are telling the same tales, and if liberties are taken others 
may use the same liberty in other ways and produce con- 
fusion. We may in imagination construct a background, 
but we must not add to the particulars supplied concern- 
ing the main characters of the tale. The story of blind 
Bartimaeus, for example, would be made more interesting 
if we could say that he had a wife and little children, but 
we have no ground for these assumptions, and if we want 
to bring out the meaning of blindness in a home we must 
do it by subsidiary stories about other persons, or by 
means of supplemental talks. Otherwise we must 
frankly state that we are only supposing things, a method 
which rather weakens a story, though some stories are so 
good that they can well bear such treatment. 

Be Free in Handling Your Material. — This looks like 
a contradiction of our earlier points, but while we must 
be true to the narrative there is no reason for repeating 

143 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 

everything as it stands in the Bible. Indeed, a great 
deal of our success in teaching moral truth by telling 
stories depends on our ability to omit unnecessary 
details. Having, in accordance with our first point, 
made up our minds as to the truth the story is to convey, 
we must treat the whole passage freely with a view to 
making that truth stand out strong and clear. Irrelevant 
details should be omitted; subsidiary points, over- 
emphasized, for our purpose, in the narrative, should be 
treated more simply; condensed sentences may need 
opening out. Frequently considerable rearrangement is 
called for, so that, among other things, necessary ex- 
planations may be given before the point which depends 
on them is made. Enjoying this freedom, it is possible 
in some cases to use the same story to teach several 
truths : while the story remains in essence the same, the 
treatment of it varies according to the needs of the truth 
to be emphasized. 

Avoid Critical Issues with Children. — There is no 
good gained by debating historical points before the his- 
torical sense is developed, which rarely happens until 
after the twelfth birthday. Whatever critical difficulties 
a story may present, if we use it at all, we should use it 
as a story and tell it as an actual event with plenty of 
vigour and life. The stories in this book, relating to the 
crossing of the Red Sea (pages 13-15) and Elijah's sacrifice 
(pages 34-37), show how events which have often been 
exaggerated into miracles may be told in a more natural 
way without lessening their interest. But when we are 
dealing with stories like those in Daniel, we shall only 
spoil them if we begin to talk about the conditions under 
144 



APPENDIX 

which they were written, instead of the conditions pre- 
supposed in the stories themselves. The background for 
the Daniel stories is Babylonia, and in that light we must 
tell them, leaving their relation to the Maccabean period 
for discussion at an age when historical criticism can be 
appreciated. 

Keep Jesus in the Centre. — In telling Bible stories it 
is important to maintain a true balance. The Old Testa- 
ment tales are so vivid that there is real danger of their 
overshadowing the New Testament. Teachers should, 
therefore, realize that our aim is to teach the truth of 
Christ. While the Old Testament is a great mine of 
stories having moral force, the New is not one whit its 
inferior. If we try to recall the stories Jesus told, the 
stories told about Jesus, and the stories of His influence 
on others, we shall see that there is a great mass of 
material of which Jesus Himself is the centre. Two 
things are necessary : first, that we should make large 
use of this New Testament material; and, second, that we 
should teach the Old Testament stories only to illustrate 
truths which harmonize with the Master's message. The 
second rule will prevent entirely the use of some Old 
Testament stories and lead to a new emphasis in many 
others. Observance of these points leaves little difficulty 
in keeping our teaching up to the Christian standard. 



145 



IMPORTANT DATES 

B.C. 

The Exodus about 1200 

Period of the Judges . . between 1200 and 1000 
David's Reign .... about 1010-970 

Solomon's Reign 970-930 

Division into Two Kingdoms : Israel and Judah 930 

Elijah's Ministry about 875-850 

Amos's Mission ..... about 760 

Fall of Samaria, End of Kingdom of Israel . . 722 
Discovery of the Book, Josiah's Reforms . . 621 
The Exile : First Deportation .... 597 

Jerusalem destroyed : Second Deportation . . 586 

Babylon taken by Cyrus 538 

The Return under Zerubbabel .... 537 

The Second Temple founded 536, recommenced 520, 

finished ........ 516 

Ezra's Mission 458 

Nehemiah rebuilds Jerusalem's Walls . . . 445 
( The Law,' i.e., the Pentateuch, published . . 444 
Conquests of Alexander the Great . . about 250 

Palestine under the Ptolemies of Egypt . 300-200 

The Prophetic Canon complete . . about 250 

Hebrew Language gradually replaced by Aramaic 350-150 
Palestine under the Seleucidse of Syria . 198-142 

Maccabean Revolt 167-162 

Period of Jewish Independence . . . 142-63 
Completion of the Old Testament Canon about 100 

Roman Conquest of Palestine 63 

The Septuagint : The Law, 280-250 ; Rest of Greek 

Translation 250-1 

146 






INDEX 



Abiding Worth, 140 
Amos, 54-73, 82, 84, 89, 140 
Antiochus Epiphanes, 117 
Apocalyptic, 132 
Apocrypha, 132 
Aramaic, 116, 134 
Ark, 44. 
Asherah, 60 
Assyrians, 73, 74, 82 
Authority, 89, 109, 128-130 

Baal, 34-37, 47. 

Baalim, 35, 42-43, 87 

Babylon, 91-103, 111 

Bel, Temple of, 93-96 

Bible, Growth of, 11-12, 31-33, 

72, 88-90, 97-100, 106-110, 

119-123, 128-137 
Book of Jashar, 70 
Book of the Wars of the Lord, 

70 

Canaanites, 29-30, 40-41 
Canon, 109, 119-136 
Captivity, Baylonish, 91-111 
Centralization of Worship, 80, 

86-87, 104, 116-123 
Chief Messages, 137-138 
Chosen People, 16-21, 57, 123- 

128, 136-139 
Christ, 19-22, 67, 138-140 
Christianity, 12, 27, 138-140 
Chronicles, 134 
Circumcision, 27, 48 
Compositeness, 71-72, 99-100 



Conquest of Canaan, 29-31, 40- 

45 
Covenant, 16-23, 78, 86, 108 
Cyrus, 101-104 

Daniel, 95, 132 
David, 45-46, 52 
Decalogue, 18-22 
Dedication, Feast of, 118 f.n. 
Deuteronomy, 81-90, 100 
Discovery of the Book, 74-85 
Dispersion, 117 
Divination, 43, 44, 80 f.n. 

ECCLESIASTES, 133 

Editing Documents, 71-72, 99- 

100, 106 
Elijah, 34-53, 61-62, 89, 140 
Elisha, 50 

Elohist Narrative, 71-72 
Ephod, 44 
Esther, 105, 132 
Exile, 91-111, 138, 140 
Ezekiel, 66, 80, 96-101, 122, 126 
Ezra, 106-111, 120, 124, 128, 134 

Five Rolls, 109, 134 

Foreign Marriages, 106, 110, 124 

Foretelling, 61, 62, 73 

Gentiles, 116, 125-128 

Greek Empire, 115 

Greek Language, 117, 134, 135 

Haggai, 103-104 

4 Hanging Gardens,' 93 

147 



GROWTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 



Hebrew Language, 116-117, 184- 

135 
Hebrew People, 12, 14-16, 20- 

80, 31-33, 40, 44-45, 55, 63- 

64, 73, 90, 94-95, 112-119, 

123-128, 136-137 
Hezekiah, 83, 86, 89 
High Places, 42-44, 78-79, 86-87 
Historical Books, 87-88, 99-100, 

119-121 
Historical Prophets, 69 
History and Revelation, 22, 65- 

67, 87-88, 120, 136-140 
Hosea, 66, 82, 89 
Human Sacrifice, 43, 79 

Idolatry, 35, 43-48, 87, 96 
Imperfection of Covenant, 19; 

cp. 65-66 
Incompleteness of Old Testa- 
ment, 136-140 
Inspiration, 16, 51-52, 65 
Isaiah, 82-84, 86, 89, 121 
Isaiah, the Second, 101-102 

Jehovah, 15, 20-23, 37-38, 43-45, 

48, 65, 138-140 
Jehovah and the Nation, 16-21, 

57-60, 98, 104, 138-140 
Jehovist Narrative, 71-72, 108 
Jeremiah, 66, 75, 80, 98, 122, 126 
Jewish Canon, 109 
Jerusalem, 78, 80, 83-87, 86, 94, 

101-107, 111, 113-119 
Jewish Colony, 103-111, 113-114, 

116 
Jezebel, 46-47, 50, 53 
Job, 133 
Jonah, 123-128 
Joshua, 29-30, 40 
Josiah, 74-90 
Judah, 46, 74-90 
Judges, 30, 40, 49 

Law op Moses, 24-26, 84-85, 
106-111, 128-130 

148 



Maccabees, 116, 117-118, 132 

Malachi, 105 

Manasseh, 82-83 

Materials of Bible, 31-32, 67-73, 

98-101 
Memorials, 31-32, 99 
Messiah, 135, 138-139 
Micah, 82, 89 

Minor Prophets, 109, 128-130 
Missionary Ideals, 124-128 
Monarchy, 84-35, 44-45, 49-53, 

58-60, 77-80, 83, 90, 94 
Moses, 18-17, 24-29, 33, 45, 84- 

87, 108 

Nathan, 52, 69, 89 

Nehemiah, 95, 107-110, 114, 124- 

134 
Non-Mosaic Elements, 27-29, 43- 

46, 95-98, 106, 114-119 
Northern Israel, 84, 46-47, 54- 

61, 73, 82, 86 

Parable, 126-127 

Past, Veneration for the, 99-100, 

120-121, 134-135 
Passing and Permanent, 66-67 
Patriarchs, 27-28, 71-72 
Pentateuch, 99-100, 107-111, 128- 

129 
Persecution, 46-47, 59-60, 82-83, 

117, 131-132 
Persian Empire, 101-104, 114- 

115 
Philistines, 30, 40-41, 45, 49 
' Poetical Books,' 109, 134-185 
Preparation, Ages of, 31-32 
Priestly Document, 99, 108 
Priests, 47-48, 53, 59-61, 86-87, 

106, 114, 116 
Primitive Document, 70-72, 100 
Prophecy, 49-53, 57-67, 85-88, 96- 

97, 101-2, 111, 128-132 
Prophetic Nation, 136-137 
Prophetic Schools, 49 



INDEX 



Prophetic Writings, 67-78, 81, 

84-86, 87-88, 100, 121, 124- 

131 
Prophets, 51-53, 56-61, 81-85, 

96-97, 100, 102-105, 125, 131, 

136 
1 Prophets, The,' 109, 120-130 
Prophets, False, 50 
Proverbs, 100, 134 
Psalms, 100, 122, 136, 140 

Rechabites, 43 

Red Sea, Crossing of, 13-15 

Restoration of Sacrifices, 103, 

118 n. 
Return from Babylon, 101-105 
Revelation, 21-26, 50, 65-66, 136- 

140 
Roman Empire, 74, 118 

Sacrifice, 27, 36-37, 57, 103, 105 
Samaria, 55, 73, 82 
Samaritans, 103, 111, 113 
Samaritan Pentateuch, 111 
Samuel, 50, 52, 69, 88 
Scribes, 129 f.n. 
Scythians, 74 



Second Isaiah, 101-102 
Separateness, 105-107, 110, 123- 

128 
Solomon, 46, 86, 134 
Songs, 15, 32, 100, 123 
Story-telling, 28, 31, 141-145 
Suffering, Problem of, 133-134 
Sun-worship, 79 
Symbolic Narrative, 125-127 
Synagogues, 97, 117, 122, 129 

Temple at Jerusalem, 76, 86, 90, 
94, 98, 103-107, 114, 116-117, 
121, 122 

Teraphim, 80 

Testament, 12, 19 f.n. 

Tradition, 25, 27-28 

Wall-rebuilding, 107-108 
Wilderness Wanderings, 24-29 
World of the Ancients, 63-64 
Writing and Writings, 67-68, 72, 

84-86, 89-90, 99-100 
* Writings,' the, 109, 131-136 
Writing Prophets, 69-70 

Zechariah, 103-104 



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12. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 

13. Tales and Legends of Scotland. 

14. Warrior Saints. 

15. The Flying Horse. 

Each 160-176 pages, is. $d. net ; also limp cloth, is. 6d. net 

16. Tales from the Eddas. 

17. Tales from Chaucer. 

18. Tales of Early England. 

19. Fables and Nursery Tales. 

20. A Book of Nature Myths. 

21. The Wonderful Voyages of Gulliver. 

22. The Adventures of the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid. 

23. The Adventures of Deerslayer. From Fenimore Cooper. 

24. Gisli the Outlaw. 

25. Old Greek Folk Stories. 

26. Tales from William Morris. 

27. Northland Sagas. 

28. Tales from the Kalevala. 

29. Fairy Tales and Story Poems. 

30. The Last of the Mohicans. From Fenimore Coop«r. 

31. A Hero of Old France. The Story of Roland. 

32. More Nature Myths. 

33. Bevis of Hampton. 

34. Heroes of Welsh History. 

35. Robin Hood. 



CHILDREN of the WORLD 

By LENORE E. MULETS 
Illustrated by ELIAS GOLDBERG 

Part One — Jacques and Odette of France; 
Amerigo, the Italian 

96 pages. Large crown $vo. Sewed, Is. net 

Part Two — Sancho, the Portuguese ; Fernando, 
the Spaniard 

72 pages. Sewed, Is. net 

The two volumes in one, 180 pages, cloth boards ', with picture jacket, 

3s. 6d. net 



THE opening volumes of this attractive series provide four charming 
little stories about children of Southern Europe. Each story inter- 
weaves a little sketch of a particular country, with an account of the 
experiences of a child who lives there. Just enough adventure is intro- 
duced to vivify the incidents. 

Young people will take delight in reading of Sancho, the Portuguese 
lad, who tires of living on his father's farm and longs for a life on the sea. 
Accompanied by his mother he visits an uncle in Lisbon, and from there 
makes a voyage to Oporto and back. The account of Sancho's travels 
gives occasion for a description of the two great cities of Portugal and 
of the countryside through which he passes. 

Fernando is a Spanish lad who wanders throughout the length and 
breadth of Spain with his friend and protector, a roving workman. He 
visits the great cities with their markets and factories, the sunny provinces 
of the south filled with orange and olive orchards, and the mines and 
mountains of the interior. The child who follows Fernando in these 
journeys will have a good idea of the romantic land of Spain. 

The life of the thrifty French peasants is well described in the story of 
Jacques and Odette, who live on a farm in Southern France. Their father 
went to the War, and the letters which he wrote home give some notion of 
Paris and the provinces of the north. Children will gain a sympathetic 
insight into the life of the French through reading this little story. 

Sicily is the birthplace of Amerigo, but his adventurous life is spent in 
various parts of Italy. Orphaned by the earthquake which destroyed 
Messina, he is adopted by a wealthy Genoese, with whom he travels 
through Italy, viewing its beautiful scenery and famous cities, and learning 
of its wonderful past. 

These stories convey to the child the distinctive atmosphere of the 
countries of Southern Europe to which our attention is now so largely 
directed. The quaint illustrations quicken the young reader's interest 
in the scenes that the text so delightfully visualizes. 

Specially drawn maps of the countries described add greatly to the 
value of the books. 



Attractive Nature Books 

TRUE STORIES ABOUT DOGS, By Lilian Gask. New 

Edition. Illustrated. 280 pages, 8£ x 6 inches. 6s. net. 
The dog stories are • true' in the sense that all the incidents used have 
been obtained from reputable sources, but the auti.or has woven them 
into a fabric of her own making, and has thus given them an interest for 
young readers which the plain anecdote or narrative often lacks. 

TRUE STORIES ABOUT HORSES, By Lilian Gask. Illus- 
trated. 272 pages, 8£ x 6 inches. 6s. net. 
The note above with reference to True Stories about Dogs applies to this 
book also. Lovers of horses will delight in these stories. 

THE QUEST OF THE WHITE MERLE By Lilian Gask. 

Illustrated. 284 pages, %\ x 6 inches. 5s. net. 
This charming volume guides the child through the feathered world in 
a delightful manner. It is sure to prove wholly acceptable to all little 
folks. 

IN THE ONCE UPON A TIME, A Fairy Tale of Science. 

By Lilian Gask. Illustrated. 284 pages, 8£ x 6 inches. 5s. net. 

LEGENDS OF OUR LITTLE BROTHERS, Folk-lore of Bird 
and Beast. By Lilian Gask. Illustrated. 272 pages, 8 \ x 6 inches. 
5s. net. 

A BOOK OF NATURE MYTHS, By F. Holbrook. Illus- 

trated. 160 pages. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. 

MORE NATURE MYTHS, By F. V. Farmer. Illustrated. 

160 pages. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. net. 

LESSONS FROM NATURE'S WORKSHOP. By W. J. Claxton. 

With Illustrations in Half-tone. 192 pages. Crown 8vo, limp 
cloth, 2s. net. 

STORIES OF PLANT LIFE, STORIES OF ANIMAL LIFE, 

Two Volumes of Nature Stories for Young Readers. By Florence 
Bass. New Edition, with New Illustrations. 128 pages. Crown 8vo, 
limp cloth, is. 3d. net each. 

DAYS BEFORE HISTORY, By H. R. Hall. Illustrated. 

160 pages. Crown 8vo, limp cloth, is. 6d. net. 
A new edition of this successful book, carefully revised and in many 
parts rewritten. The sixteen full-page illustrations have been specially 
drawn for this issue. On its first appearance the story met with unqualified 
approval, and it fills a gap in juvenile literature. 

STORIES ABOUT BEARS, By Lilian Gask. With 4 Colour 

Illustrations and attractive Cover Design by Edwin Noble. 160 
pages. Oblong, 10 x 5$ inches. 3s. 6d. net. 

BABES OF THE WILD, A Book for Little Folks. By 

Lilian Gask. With 4 Colour Illustrations and Picture Cover in 
Colours. 160 pages. Oblong, 10 X 5$ inches. 3s.6d.net. 



"A Treasury of Verse" and "A Treasury of Prose and Poetry" meet, 
in a practical way, the requirements of Circular 753, " The Teaching of 
English," and of Circular 808, "Suggestions for the Teaching of 
English," issued by the Board of Education. 

A Treasury of Verse 

For School and Home. In Seven Parts. Edited by M. G. Edgar, M.A. 
Parts I and II, 128 pages, sewed, is. net ; limp cloth, is. 3d. net each. 
Part III, 160 pages, limp cloth, is. 6d. net. 
Part IV, 192 pages, limp cloth, is. 9d. net. 
Part V, Ballads, 192 pages, new edition, limp cloth, is. 9d. net. 
Part VI, Elizabethan Lyrics, edited by Amy Cruse, 160 pages, 

limp cloth, is. 6d. net. 
Part VII, A Treasury of Scottish Verse, edited by H. A. Kellow, 

M.A., 112 pages, limp cloth, is. net. 
Parts II, III, and IV in one volume, entitled A Treasury of Verse 

for Boys and Girls. 500 pages, with Special Indexes. Cloth, 

5s. net. 

This course of school poetry can be unreservedly recommended as the best 
series which has yet appeared. It has secured enthusiastic appreciation for its 
freshness and width of range. As regards the former, no expense or trouble 
has been spared to make the series adequately representative of the best copy- 
right verse, and among the many present-day authors whose poetry has been 
included are the following : 

Oliver Herford, Gabriel Setoun, Norman Gale, Judge Parry, F. D. Sherman, 
W. Canton, Fred E. Weatherly, J. J. Bell, Will. H. Ogilvie, G. F. Bradby, 
Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Noyes, Gerald Gould, Henry Newbolt, W. B. Yeats, 
Austin Dobson, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, R. C. Lehmann, Walter C. Smith, 
etc. etc. 

"The style of the verse selected is just the thing for active-limbed and 
active-minded boys and girls. The tone is healthy, the sentiment cheerful. 
We prefer these selections to any we have seen." — The Secondary School 
Journal. 

Prospectus with Lists of the Poems, Specimen Pages, etc., sent post free 

A Treasury of Prose and Poetry 

For learning by heart. In Six Graded Parts. Compiled by Amy Barter. 

To meet the requirements of the Board of Education 
Extract from the Official Circular No. 753 on " The Teaching of English "; 
" In every class repetition from memory should form an essential part of the 
instruction in Literature. There is no reason for restricting learning by heart 
to poetry, as is commonly done ; passages of good prose should be learnt by heart 
also. Nor need all the pupils in a class invariably learn the same piece." 
Book I, 64 pages, sewed, 7d. net ; limp cloth, 9d. net. 
Books II to V, 96 pages each, sewed, 9d. net ; limp cloth, is. net each. 
Book VI, 128 pages, sewed, is. net; limp cloth, is. 3d. net. 
Books II to VI are bound in One Volume, with Special Indexes. Crown 
8vo, 480 pages, cloth boards, 5s. net. 
A Special Prospectus with Specimen Pages sent post free 



New Story Books 

LOST ISLAND 

By H. P. Holt and Ralph Henry Barbour. With Colour Frontis- 
piece by Percy Tarrant and 8 other Illustrations by Charles M. 
Relyes. 256 pages. Size 8 x Si inches. 6s. net. 
A fine story of the sea, full of thrilling incident. 

THE BOYS OF FELLINGHAM SCHOOL 

By John G. Rowe. With 4 Colour Illustrations by Percy Tarrant. 
240 pages. Size Sx$l inches. 6s. net. 

UNDER SEVENSHIELDS CASTLE 

By Queenie Scott-Hopper. With 4 Colour Illustrations by Honor 
C. Appleton. 192 pages. Size >]\ x 6\ inches. 5s.net. 
A most attractive story for the imaginative boy or girl. 

THE TOOKEY AND ALICE MARY TALES 

By R. de Montjoie Rudolf, I.S.O. With 4 Colour Illustrations by 
Margaret W. Tarrant. 192 pages. Size 7 J X 6\ inches. 5s. net. 

JACK AND ME 

By Maude S. Forsey. With 4 Colour Illustrations. 192 pages. Size 
7 \ x 6^ inches. 5s. net. 

THE ARKANSAW BEAR 

By Albert Bigelow Paine. With 8 Colour Illustrations by Harry 
Rountree. 128 pages. Size 10 x 7^ inches. 6s.net. 
A book of rare humour for children, which will often be borrowed by their parents. 

TELL/ME^WHY STORIES ABOUT ANIMALS 

By C. H. Claudy. With 8 Colour Illustrations. Size 8£ x 5$ inches. 
6s. net. 

WHY.SO STORIES 

Retold from Folk-lore and Legends of Animals by Edwin Gile Rich. 
With Colour Frontispiece by M. C. Ford and 9 Full-page Line Drawings 
by Charles Copeland. Size *]\ x 6\ inches. 192 pages. 5s. net. 

HINDU FAIRY TALES 

Retold by Florence Griswold. With 4 Colour Illustrations by 
Helen Jacobs. Size 7£ x6£ inches. 192 pages. 5s. net. 

STORIES TO READ AND TO TELL 

For Little Ones of Nine and Ten. By Fanny E. Coe. With 4 
Colour Illustrations by Eileen Robinson. Size l\x6\ inches. 192 
pages. 5 s - net « 

A STORY GARDEN FOR LITTLE CHILDREN 

By Maud Lindsay, author of Mother Stories. With Introduction by 
Emilie Poulsson. Colour Frontispiece by M. W. Tarrant and 20 
Full-page Half-tones by F. L. Young. 112 pages. Size 7| x 6£ inches. 
5s. net. 

THE STORY-TELLER 

By Maud Lindsay. With 12 Colour Illustrations by P'loeence L» 
Young. 160 pages. Size *j\ x 6\ inches. 5s. net. 
Stories for little folks, told with Miss Maud Lindsay's rare charm of style. 



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